14th September 2020

  

 

 

 Lying is giving information while knowing it to be untrue.

There can be few parents and teachers who have not impressed upon children that it is wrong to lie.

These same adults will, over the course of their lives, tell many hundreds of  untruths.

 The World's Biggest Liar Competition is held in Cumbria where contestants, who really do come from all over the world,  have five minutes to convince an audience with their porkies.

Politicians and lawyers are banned.

 BBC presenter Sue Perkins won the 100 year old competition in 2006, the first woman to do so.

Psychologists tell us that everyone, without exception, lies.

 Advertisers, politicians, teachers, clergymen, American presidents, sweet old grannies, barristers all lie through their teeth.   

In fact it's alleged that one of the Cumbrian champions was the Bishop of Carlisle with the shortest speech ever. He said, “I have never told a lie in my life.”

So knowing this, why do we ask and expect children to tell nothing but the truth?

 US Social Psychiatrist Yah Lee discovered that pathological liars, have 25% more white brain cells than more truthful people.  These cells begin developing, in everyone, at the age of 2, when children begin to lie.

When asked a sticky question,  rather than simply telling the truth - and shaming the devil, as they used to say, we search for an excuse (lie).

 There are some obvious reasons to lie: to get out of trouble; to make money or  achieve a position of power. 

 There are equally good reasons to be truthful. If you are a known liar, who’s going to trust you?

The best relationships are based on confidence and the ability to rely on the person you live or work with.  

The majority of divorces have at their beginning, a  lie of some kind.   When trust goes, so, quite often,  does the relationship.

 

So I propose that when we talk to children about lying, we try to be honest.

We teach them about lies and how they are part of life but that they should not be mis-used.

We don’t just tell them not to do it; we are all hard-wired to lie but there are some lies which don't matter and can even be fun.

We don’t punish them for doing what we too  have certainly done in the past and will in the future.  

We create an atmosphere where children have the confidence to come to us and admit they’ve done something, knowing they’ll get a fair hearing and not hypocrisy.

We explain that lying is part of being human but if we lie a lot and especially to get something to which we’re not entitled, then people will lose confidence in us, dislike us and assume we always lie.

Then, when we tell the truth, no one will believe us.

 

We could teach children the value of being truthful, whilst accepting there will be times when they need to lie.

 I was recently asked to give an example of this. I recalled an incident related by one of my students.

As he was walking to school, a car pulled up beside him,  a man leaned out, pointed to a classmate walking ahead, ‘Do you know where she lives?’   

He did but shook his head. Then warned the girl, her parents and the school.  Should he have given the address? Of course not.

Let's be honest about lying for a change.

 There may be white lies and black lies but lying itself isn’t black and white, it has many shades and many reasons. 

If we want our children to trust us, we will admit this and teach them the value of truth.