How Do Children Learn to Lie

This would be, learned before, say, by modeling??? From the Front Page Sections, translated…

My friend came to me, distressed, told me, that her son is only three, and he’d already, started lying, he’d gotten scolded by his teacher at school, denied it, and told her, that the teacher was scolding someone else, she’d asked me what she should do.

Normally, a three-year-old had yet to learn to lie, but, the maturing early children may learn how to watch the adults’ faces and work to dodge the consequences, and from an ancient volume, it’d said that we should teach our kids to “know others’ colors, and know others’ emotions by observations”, otherwise, the child will turn into someone who’s going to annoying others, so, learning to watch the faces at a young age is not at all a bad thing. It’s just, that after the kids learned how to dodge the consequences, an originally honest child starts to lie.

There was an experiment, where the researchers played the game of guessing candies with sixty three-year-old children from the preschool years, and the experimenters handed the kids their favorite stickers, and told them, “get ten candy, you can trade them in for a sticker.” There were two cups on the table, the kids are going to hide the candies underneath one, so the experimenters can guess, if the experimenters guessed wrong, then, the children will get to keep their candies. At the start of this game, the experimenters blindfolded themselves, when the kids told them, “okay”, then the conductors of this study took their blindfolds off, and, asked the children, “Where did you hide the candy?” most of the kids would be honest to point out where the candy is, and, the experimenter would flip open the cup, and there was a candy, then, s/he’d hollered, “Yay, I won, it’s my piece now!”, and if the child lies, pointed to the other cup, the experimenter lifted the cup and saw no candy, s/he would make a bad face said, “I lost, it’s your candy now!”, this meant, that the more honest you are, the more you won’t have that sticker you’d wanted to get, but, the three-year-olds would ALL point out where they’d hidden the candies honestly to the experimenters.

And, this experiment went further, using the “Theory of Mind” (ToM) model: the experimenters showed the children two dolls, one was Ann, the other, Sally, Ann placed a piece of candy in a box in front of Sally, when Sally left, Ann took the the candy piece and put it into ther other box, and, enters Sally again, the experimenter asked the children: where would Sally go to find the candy? The older kids knew that as Ann switched the placements, Sally wasn’t around, and for Sally, she would believe, that the candy was still in that original box, and that she would go for it in the box where she saw Ann put it; but for the younger kids, they’d pointed to the box directly, because they’d seen Ann put the box into the box, and that, is where the candy was, the younger kids can’t understand, that Sally doesn’t know that. There are many versions of this experiment, but basically, it’s testing if the kids can see things from other people’s angles, and this empathy, is extremely vital, for the kids’ futures whether it be in the scholastics, or interpersonal relations.

After the experimenter sorted out the data, they’d split the children who were honest into two groups, in one groups, they were taught the Theory of Mind, and the other wasn’t. After the kids understood the concepts, another game of what’s under the cups was played again. At which time, those kids who’d not known how to lie started lying, and those who weren’t taught the Theory of Mind still told the truth, told the experimenter where the candy was.

The experimenters wanted to know how long the effect of ToM will last, so, after twenty-eight days, they’d gotten all the children back into the lab for another game of cups. And the results found, that after the kids learned to lie, they’d learned it, that it wouldn’t be forgotten, because time had passed by. Just as what ALL parents knew: bad behaviors don’t need to be taught to children, they’ll watch and model after them, and the good habits usually take a very long time to set in (another thing that stressed out the parents is that the bad news can get around so very fast, when the children earned an award, nobody knows, but, fi the kids misbehaved in school, then, EVERYBODY in the neighborhood knows about it).

The innocence of childhood is too precious, and almost ALL cultures won’t tolerate the lies, but, almost ALL cultures tolerate a little white lies, it’s just, that we would hope, that the kids not lose their childish innocence so soon.

So, based off of this, lying would be a LEARNED behavior, or it’s safer to say, that it is, a modeled behavior, or, even, that if the kids experienced that they’d gotten something rewarding (positive feedback) for lying, then they’re more than likely to keep on lying, and this would be a bad way to teach your young, because instead of teaching them that lying IS bad, you’re actually, rewarding them for it in action, while telling them, verbally, that lying is bad, and in ANY worlds: action ALWAYS speaks LOUDER than words!