Are you making your child a liar?

“Behave or Santa won’t come.” “You wouldn’t like this cookie. It’s spicy.”

Sound familiar? Maybe you say things like this to your child and you don’t even realize it. But according to recent research, lying to your child can increase their own likelihood of lying.

The study, published in the “Journal of Experimental Child Psychology,” involved 564 pairs of children aged 11 to 12 and their parents. Both the parents and children completed questionnaires – parents were asked if they had told certain or similar lies, and children were asked if they had been told those statements. Then, they completed a second questionnaire, asking the children how often they lied to their parents and the parents how often their children lied to them. The researchers differentiated between white lies and instrumental lies – white lies being used to instill positive emotions, and instrumental lies being used for compliance.

Researchers concluded that parents who used instrumental lies had children who were more likely to lie. Interestingly, white lies only effected a child’s lying if the child was aware they were being lied to.

“When parents lie, even if they are little white lies for the sake of convenience, it can send very confusing signals to young children who are still mastering social cues and have been taught to always be honest,” explains Dr. Anisha Shetty, a pediatrician at Advocate Children’s Hospital. “While occasional white lies may seem harmless, remember that greater exposures to parental lying can have different effects on a child’s wellbeing. It can increase their amount of lying, affect self-esteem, lead to missed opportunities for parent-child bonding and impact their mental health.”

Dr. Shetty says that lying can be a developmental milestone in children, as it relates to increased cognitive function. However, children should be able to differentiate between truth and fiction by 6 years old.

“That’s when parents should have conversations with their kids about honesty,” she says. “Children lie for different reasons — some of it is for attention, some occur when children are under a significant amount of stress, some arise when young children have a hard time differentiating reality from fiction, and some of it is triggered by the worry of disappointing their parents when they have done something wrong. Knowing the cause of the lie may help parents work with their children on the importance of being truthful.”

The study’s authors call for more research around the effects of different types of parental lying and its effect on a child’s socialization of lying and how they interpret those lies.

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