Liar, liar, pants on fire!
Lying takes skill. One has to be inventive, logical and convincing to maneuver the fictitious narrative so it parallels reality without contradicting it. It requires surgical precision in the selective substitution of facts and the storyline has to be tailored-made, playing to the listener’s emotions to gain trust. Psychologists say kids with the skills to succeed in life are better at lying, too! I don’t doubt it. However, even though I am honest with my daughter and will answer any legitimate questions with honest (and age appropriate) answers, I still have reasons not to tell her the whole truth. It’s not that I have something to conceal; it’s because I have someone to protect.
One day, she discovered that her closet was in such a mess and the only way to find something to wear was to go back to the dirty laundry hamper. Another time, she came home from school with an almost full thermos of food and said that she didn’t have enough time to eat only to be ravenous at the end of the day. I know that all the kids put away their lunches the moment the first kid finishes so they won’t be left out of playing or hanging out. Yet another instance, I was offered some lame and deflected version of the truth about her homework completeness.
Enough of these incidents happened and I finally said, “I have little control over what you and your friends talk about, but you do not need to hide the truth from your father. Not even a little bit.” She knew even from very early on that she won’t get into trouble for telling me that she got into a fight at school, but would be in big trouble for not telling me why she got into it. Then she ratcheted up her courage and said, Daddy, you lied to me when you told me my hamster ran away but he actually got eaten by a cat. My justification was, “You were five years-old and couldn’t handle the news that your pet hamster was mauled by wildlife! There were entrails on the patio furniture. It would have been unsettling, so I postponed telling you.” She paused for a long while and then asked, So when is it okay to lie? Speechless I was. I took an even longer pause before I said anything.
Although I didn’t teach her how to lie, I didn’t forbid her from doing so either. She’ll have to figure out through her socialization in learning the fine art between truth and tact.
This topic is probably one of my most difficult discussions I’ve ever had with my daughter. I’d sooner have another discussion about penetration than to teach her about lying. At least with sex, it’s pretty factual. Whether, when and how to lie is far more contextual. My eventual explanation to her was drawn partly from an article I had read by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, a contributing writer to the National Geographic who writes about human nature.
Most of my daughter’s childhood lies are stated to protect herself from transgression (didn’t do laundry) to avoidance (didn’t do homework). She’s not in a situation where she needs to lie to promote herself (for financial or personal gains). Although, she is becoming more adept at selective disclosure, she does not outright lie.
What I did tell her is that the truth will always come out because everyone has a fragment of the shared narrative; this jigsaw will eventually be made whole. My advice to her was that if she is honest with herself and admits to mistakes as learning opportunities, there will be few, if any, reasons to lie. With like-minded friends, she will have even fewer reasons to be secretive and narcissistic. I also emphasized that there are no reasons to be like that with me, her father, the primary caregiver. The rest she’ll have to figure out through her socialization in learning the fine art between truth and tact. Although I didn’t teach her how to lie, I didn’t forbid her from doing so either. I feel that doing so would be akin to declawing a cat and letting it out into the night. Lying is not the problem; it is the underlying reasons that need to be unpacked.
