Telling children lies

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This well written essay on how it's bad to tell children lies:

http://www.paulgraham.com/lies.html

struck me as something an aspie (attached to literal truth) might write. The author is ubergeek Paul Graham.

oh, like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny and if you have sex before marriage you will be hit by a bus?

those lies?

Merle

How is hiding truth from kids lying? You have to make something up for it to be a lie.


Like a child asks you where do babies come from.
You say "From their mother."
The child asks "How does the baby get in there?"
You say "from the sperm"
The child asks "Where does the sperm come from?"
You say "from the father."
Then the child asks "How does the sperm get to the mother?"
Now what are you going to say? It be inappropriate to tell the child about sex, you have to wait till they are in their pre teens or teens, so instead parents say "You're too young to know this stuff. I can't tell you anymore."
How is that a lie? You're still being truthful, you're just refusing to tell more but you are being truthful about them being too young to hear that stuff and you can't say more because it's inappropriate to tell young kids this stuff.
But it be a lie if you told your child babies come from storks. Some people just don't know how to be honest with their child about them not being able to tell them something.

Last edited by Spokane_Girl on 03 Jun 2008, 4:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Who decided that it was inappropriate to address the principles of sex with humans under the age of 18? Seriously, it boggles the mind how arbitrary such things are.


M.

Well, I think that it is a good thing to tell children lies, because lying is a useful social skill, and they need to be exposed to how, when, and what kind of lies are ok to tell. You see we tend to get all hung up on the idea of an objective truth, when the reality is that truth is whatever the person in power wants it to be. Because some answers are not acceptable even if they are "true", you can call them little white lies or whatever. Learning to lie and lie well is something it has taken me most of my life to learn, and caused me no end of trouble until I did learn it. It used to bother me to hear adults lie to children, now I realize that is a necessary part of children's socialization. So that when they grow up and go out into the world they will know not to take everything at face value; they will know that lying is a part of life, and that they will be lied to; that this is not an honest world, and the sooner you make your peace with it the better. It is all an elaborate game, and the key is to play the game without admitting that it is a game.

it is not against the law, or how can you have sex education in schools?

Merle

Assumptive. I did; my response focused on the statement that "it be inappropriate" to tell that age bracket about sex.

Your point is valid, but I did not reference it... I merely questioned whose divine insight that says that individuals 18 or younger should have that part of live hidden from them, when it was accepted in earlier society without issue. Smacks of puritanism, and I don't agree. Those best adjusted, that I have encountered, are those who not only weren't lied to... but also weren't kept in the dark.

Next time, please don't assume and do ask questions if the meaning isn't clear. Thank you.


M.

GEE, I'm glad I never had to ask! I knew a good deal before I was a teenager.

To simply say from the mother is deceptive. That kind of thinking is where you get kids asking for a sibling of a certain sex, etc..., and being disappointed or angry when they don't get him/her.

HEY, I guess they come from storks as much as they come from the mother! The mother sees the stork(thinks about the stupid story and wants a kid), forgets about the birth control, and decides to try to have a child!

And THERE you have it folks! Babies DO come from storks!

As for inappropriate, WHO KNOWS!?!? I'll never forget when I saw two kids earlier and, following an inquiry by a woman looking for them later, I ended up looking in the mens restroom. There was the girl, sitting on the toilet in front of the boy. I think she was "showing hers", if you get my meaning. They were perhaps 5. I saw this one boy who, at one point had his ... out from his bathing suit. I think it was intentional. He had a sister that was cute, and he probably showed HER. They were probably about 5 also. So who is to say how much they already know? The very fact that men and women are so different, and they are separated to some degree, etc... must tell them something.

And HECK, a lot of ADULTS don't even know the AREAS in which the sexes differ, outside of the most obvious.

BTW some teens don't even understand the idea. There have been weird ideas going around about how to prevent or abort a pregnancy.

I couldn't disagree more. Telling kids lies is not the same thing as teaching them social skills. All it taught me was not to trust my parents. I had to learn not to trust others one by one and on an individual bases. If you learn not to trust your parents then it just makes you question everything else they are trying to teach you...some of it useful. They should be the people who you can trust . If there is information that you don't think they can yet understand then you can tell them that..."your not old enough to understand, I will explain it when I think you are old enough to understand the whole picture. " You don't need to lie about it.

You don't need to lie to your children to teach them that people lie any more then you need to beat them to tech them people can be cruel. Try a little logic.

I did lie to the kid, in all seriousness I told her outrages lies, and her mother joined in and confirmed them. She did call us on it. Even with people you trust most, listen carefully, was what we were doing. We also had a third grader telling us she knew better, and we were not getting away with that.

So as a means of teaching critical thinking, it works.

When she was young and asked about sex she knew that babies came from mothers, and as to how, I told her the usual way. Not wanting to admit she did not know the usual way, and that my next stock answer was, "That is something you should ask your mother, as it is a girl secret. She let it pass.

Her older brother told her that that is what they taught the first week in school, as she was about to start First Grade. She very proudly told me all about how boys put their thing in a girl and that is how babies are made.

She knew how to count, I used to play how many fingers with her, adding and subtracting, and one time we hit none. That got into a discussion of Zero, and how people had not always known zero. I showed her how it fit the space between one, and minus one. She saw the whole number line, and mentioned that when they got to that in school, she already knew it.

We also used to catch the little devil evesdropping, and her mother and I discussed selling her to the Gypsys now, or spending more on her, and getting a better price later. She would come out of hiding and say she was worth a lot more. She was, so we kept her.

I only told lies I would be caught at, and she understood that I was doing it because she trusted and loved me. Once the thinking was on, she caught such concepts as the number line, when she proved to herself they were true.

Being me I sometimes answered by giving both sides of a story. Not knowing was strange, adults always acted like they knew, so she learned some questions have no simple answer. Later she would tell me her thoughts about both sides of the issue.

On the goal of raising a thinking adult it worked out well.

Sorry for not responding; I missed your reply. It's not against the law - it is a cultural thing for many in America that such discussion is inappropriate. But sex ed is the schools is pitiful and woefully limited in scope and effectiveness. In an effort to make all happy, all was lost.


M.

I disagree - I can't see why young children shouldn't know how procreation works, and refusing to tell them or treating like a scary secret is likely to give them warped views of sex.

For parents too shy (or warped themselves - , I'm being deliberately provocative or question-begging) to tell it with a straight face, there are great cartoon books aimed at young children which tell the story in a truthful and unashamed way. I asked when I was 4, was given a book to read (Where did I come from? by Peter Mayle - he also does death, puberty and divorce), and told to ask questions if I didn't understand it.

It was actually kind of boring. I was only when I realised that gran and grandpa made dad that things got interesting, but that just got me interested in genealogy, it didn't turn me into a pervert.

In general, I think the article on lies linked in the OP is great. The lies I'd plan to keep are the ones that preserve my power as a parent. I wouldn't want to argue with my partner in front of a young child. But over 10 or 11, I think a child can deal with a calm disagreement between parents - they have to learn parents aren't infallible sometime. I don't tend to yell or lose my temper in a loud and scary way, but if I did, it would be some thing to apologise for.

I'm sure I can't avoid indoctrinating my kids with atheism - I can't see the world any other way, but I'd not be upset if they came to believe something else.

Im never gonna lie to my daughter when she asks me difficult questions. Id rather tell her about sex before 18 than lie to her. I hate lying.

i reckon its the parents duty to be open about difficult stuff like that and know exactly what their talking about,
because its better for the child to hear about the facts of life on behalf of a wiser, more experienced person.

curiosity just makes them gather false info from a younger, just-as ignorant person that will screw up their perception of sex and life.

That article on lying is quite the rant. I didn't like it. I thought he has a real big chip on his shoulder, and I don't see why he's getting so worked up about it.

A lot of the 'lies' out there that cause the worst problems are things that adults themselves believe. They can't tell you the truth when they don't know it themselves. I admit I had a hard time realizing I'd been lied to growing up, but these weren't deliberate lies - they were either because people genuinely believed them themselves, or they didn't have time to explain things properly. People who told me them weren't dishonest so much as incompetent or lazy. That bugs me, but it's a different kind of betrayal. And I think when they know they're lying you can kind of pick up on it and it keeps you alert for alternate explanations.

I did know about sex, death and God growing up, and don't have any problems with what I remember being told when I asked (except when they missed the point of the question).

Actually, the lie that bugged me the most was when my mother lied and said she hadn't added alcohol to a dish and she had - I just stopped listening to her after that. She was being disrespectful. I don't know what she expected to get out of it.

Children aren't as dumb as we "adults" think. When I was a kid, I wanted to figure out what was going on around me. So yeah, if someone explained to me why the sky really was blue, I probably would have been pretty confused; but I would have learned better. It might be an aspie thing to get mad at our parents for not telling us the truth, but c'mon.. there's no reason why you should lie to kids about stupid things. Even Santa Claus.. think how far ahead of the game a kid would be if he read books during the time that the other kids were baking cookies for Santa.

It makes me wonder if adults lie purely for humor.