Our whole culture is based on lying. Politicians do it, the media does it, Wall Street does it. What do you call 98% of advertising? Distorting the truth? And when an older person notices and comments on it in front of a child, that kid is learning that lying not only goes on all the time but is tolerated and even rewarded.

I appreciate the shows as always (no lie). The story about George Washington and the cherry tree was in fact a lie fabricated by a journalist to further edify Washington's reputation as an upright moral leader-check it out-

I find this discussion really interesting because I think one of my most memorable experiences with lying was when I was 5 years old. My sister and I were in the back of our Volkswagon beetle driving along the road, not buckled in and waving over the backseat to a police officer. When he pulled my mother over and asked why my younger sister was not in a car seat she told the officer that she was 4 years old and not 3. I immediately corrected her in front of the cop saying "no no mom don't you remember she just had a birthday she's 3." That was when I experienced my mother get angry with me for telling the truth which was really confusing for me as a child of 5.

I second Alison. The only reason children are taught to lie is to cover for the parent. Mostly so the parent in not in an uncomfortable position.

Alison,
Good question. The NY Mag article did point out that focusing on the negatives of lying and/or punishing for lying are less effective than strongly promoting/praising honesty. The article offered the George Washington cherry tree legend as the type of example to continually offer children.

to lie is human and it certainly should not be punished. it should be taught however that lies contribute to human psychological pain and most directly hurts oneself. As parents there is a self serving worry that a child's lie leaves you without control of a situation. Although that may be true it is encumbant on parents to recognise that the act of a lie actually hurts the lier the most.

When I was a kid maybe 10 or younger I ate all these candies I wasn't supposed to and when I was asked about what happened to them I said my sister ate them. When my father got home he threatened to contect me to a lie detector to get me to brake and tell the truth. But I didn't and my sister got a spanking.

I read the article in New York Magazine. As the father of an-almost-six-month-old daughter (who is absolutely beautiful, by the way!), this is a very important issue. I'm reminded of a line from the movie Mrs. Doubtfire: when Mrs. Doubtfire is first introduced to the children, the youngest makes a candid remark. The mother admonishes the child, but Mrs. Doubtfire repled, "Honesty is a noble trait, my dear, which often disappears with age or entrance into politics."

How SHOULD we handle gray areas with children? When children are young, we adults teach them in terms of dichotomies: Yes/no, Right/Wrong, Good/Bad. We do this benignly in an attempt to simplify their world, to instruct them in the "important" basics.

I think we, as fully formed adults, forget how plastic a growing child is and how very much they notice and "store away" in their minds. Everything is "new" to them so they take in details we no longer notice. They sense the gray areas where much of our adult reasoning occurs and observe actions that are NOT dichotomous, but lay somewhere along the continuum between the points we have so carefully placed for them.

Our so-called "white" lies, insincere compliments ("tell Grandma how nice her hair looks" even though it really looks like a gigantic, deeply dyed fuzz-ball), false assurances ("it won't hurt" before an inoculation), and euphemistic explanations ("Grandpa is just going to sleep for a long time") are remembered. When these seemingly innocuous things are noticed by the growing child to be untrue and yet apparently NOT wrong (the adults wouldn't do it if it were really wrong, would they?), the Either/Or world we have created seems to allow untrue words: therefore lying in not wrong.