Honesty, Shmonesty: When Did Lying to Kids Get Such a Bad Wrap?
I’ve gotten in the habit of writing some pretty opinionated blogs lately, but the truth is: I still have far more questions than answers. And a good number of questions center on this whole business of lying.
Is it harmfully misleading, for example, to let my child believe in the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny? What about super heroes and Disney princesses? Magic tricks? God? Where do we draw the line? If we don’t come clean with our kids about our views on heaven, are we betraying them? But if we do come clean about Santa, are we just being shitty? How are we supposed to allow the magic of childhood to endure without confusing our kids — and ourselves?
I can easily imagine myself researching this topic a bit and then writing a blog post on lying. I can image that I might top the blog post with a headline to the effect of: “Honesty Really Is the Best Policy.” But, just as easily, I can imagine crossing out that headline (partially because it’s dreadful) and writing this one instead: “Honesty Shmonesty: When Did Lying to Kids Get Such a Bad Wrap?” Then I can imagine going back and forth on which one to use.
The point is, there’s no clear answer on this to me.
We want our kids to be moral, ethical, honest people, yet we tell them it’s okay to lie sometimes. (“They’re white lies!”) Not only that, but we out-and-out lie to them sometimes. (“No, honey, I didn’t just tell your auntie that her new client should be punched in the throat. I said she should, um, drink punch in a boat. Now run along.”) And then, to make matters even more confusing, we decide — completely subjectively and emotionally — that it’s okay to lie about some things and not about others. We even tell them it’s good to lie sometimes. “Tell your friend you love the birthday gift, honey. Otherwise, you’ll hurt her feelings.”
In an essay called “No Messing with Heaven” written a couple of years ago and re-published on the New York Times’ Motherlode blog, writer KJ Dell’Antonia quotes John Patrick Shanley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the play “Doubt.” When you let kids buy into things you don’t believe to be true, Shanley is quoted as saying, “you’re lying to your children. And one day they’re going to realize that you were a hypocrite.”
Dell’Antonia lamented, “I don’t want my kids to wake up at 10, or 15, or 50, and realize that I lied to them! That would be awful! What would they think of me?”
But then she wrote: “I can’t help noticing, as I think that through, that there’s an awful lot of ‘I’ and ‘me’ in those worries, and not a whole lot of anyone else.”
I think I’m with Dell’Antonia on this one. And if I had to write an opinion today and choose one of the headlines from above — I’d probably choose “Honesty, Shmonesty.” (Mostly because the first one is so dreadful.)
But I want to hear from you guys. Where do you fall in the lying debate? Where do you draw the line? And how is it working out for you?
Dale McGowan advocates lying to your kids actually when you read his books and I agree. You want them to learn to distrust authority – all authority including yours. This isn’t to be mean, but how else do you encourage them to think critically for themselves except by exposing them to the fact that you are not always going to be told the truth.
I lie to my son, but mostly about inconsequential and funny things. When he has an issue that really matters, I tell him the truth. Because I do want him to trust me despite it all.
As for Santa and the tooth fairy – my son refused to give his teeth to the tooth fairy because he might want them at some point in the future and well, how to you not indulge a kid who all he wanted for xmas last year was his very own nutcracker.
My thoughts -they’ll turn out fine regardless. Just do your best and try not to stress.
Yep, love McGowan’s attitude toward this stuff. As I mentioned below, he takes the position that learning the Santa story is false is a right of passage for kids, something to be proud of. If you make it something to celebrate, there’s no reason to feel guilty — as long as you haven’t gone overboard to convince them that these things exist. And for the most part, I don’t think that happens. Kids hear the stories and just naturally want so much to believe them, don’t you think?
I really like Jen’s “rite of passage” idea! It puts an new layer of value into the myth. Wendy, I also like the way you phrased the statement that “kids hear the stories and just naturally want so much to believe them”. On some level, we all want to believe in things that add fun or affirmation of some sort to our lives – long after we stop being a kid looking forward to Santa’s visit. Looked at from that perspective, you could argue that it’s actually really valuable to tell them about Santa. The lesson they learn (after they’re old enough to have passed the “figuring it out rite of passage”) is that some things are fun and easy to believe, but they’re still not true.
Who knows, it might even give them some empathy for religious believers later in life and I’m always in favor of teaching empathy. So that instead of looking at all religious people as being stupid, I hope my kids might view them as simply needing a little more of what believing in something gives them.
” …simply needing a little more of what believing in something gives them.” LOVE.
This is a great discussion. I tend to agree with Ben, as far as “the line is drawn between things that grown ups might believe and things they don’t.” When we do the Santa thing with our kids, I’m not even a little worried that they are going to grow up believing it. It’s just something fun and magical for childhood.
We’ve also used Georgia’s question of “What do you think?” as the standard response when our kids start questioning Santa. I have friends who have gone through elaborate schemes to keep their kids believing, essentially creating “evidence” that Santa exists. For me, that’s going a little too far. We look at it a bit like a right of passage and are very proud of our kids when they solve the Santa mystery. Incidentally, my daughter was not betrayed when she figured it out, but excitedly joined us in making Christmas magical for her little brothers.
I use the “What do you think?” response for most of the God questions my kids ask me, too. I want them to value their own observations.
At any rate, I think honesty is to be valued, but, yeah, there is a basic difference between white lies that are told to soften things or make people feel good, and ones that can hurt others.
Great to hear from you, as always, Leanna.
Not being considered a hypocrite! That is what will matter me the most. There are at least five elderly people I know in my life, who I think are plain hypocrites, because of the way they preached me something during my growing up years, but which they themselves practised differently (It may or may not be in relation to religion and God). Even today, being a 25-year-old, the thing I fear most is being called a hypocrite. I will not lie if something doesn’t appeal to me. I have made my beliefs clear to my family in relation to God and irrationality. I will do the same when I meet someone new and even to my kids in the future!
Great point — the line needs to be drawn without hypocrisy, for sure. Thanks, Rohan.
We had this debate a couple of years ago before sitting down with our daughter and telling her the truth and apologizing. I felt terrible then (and she was 4), I can’t imagine waiting years before she found out herself. Great quote: “That would be awful! What would they think of me?”
JT – This is only my opinion, but do you not think that one day you’ll regret not answering your son’s every question to the best of your ability? I really enjoy that part of being a parent and kind of feel like that’s the main part of the job.
Thanks, Mark! I’d be curious to know your reaction to Jen Hancock’s comment above. I sort of love the idea of making “figuring out” there is no Santa or Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy a right-of-passage. “You figured it out! Good for you! How did you do that?” Isn’t that preferable to sucking the joy out of these childish beliefs?
Wendy,
I like the idea, but I’m not sure I could have done it myself. As to distrust of authority, I feel less guilty using the, “Some people believe in X but I don’t see any evidence for it.” and, “some people lie,” lines. This way I can restate the point as it arises rather than wait for a one-off message (of course, you could do both, it’s just not my way).
My background is in biochemistry and it often felt like undergrad lectures were entirely composed of the history of science so I can sort of comprehend the incredible mass of information we base our everyday lives on. It is a good thing in theory to reject everything you’re told and/or test each piece of information scientifically, but I think at some stage (to have time to live your life) you have to accept the word of an authority. (Most people can’t review meteorological data to verify every weather report they hear, instead they accept the reporters authority). I don’t think anyone should accept authority blindly, but I think that if children are taught to critically follow a rationalization and ask questions to determine it’s validity, they’ll be in a good position to choose what/who to believe.
My favorite time as a parent is when my daughter is told something untrue and she gets a sly look and grin on her face and says, “That’s not right”
Totally. And the more I think about it — although I still love the idea of the Santa myth being a rite-of-passage experience — there are better ways of making your kid a critical thinker than lying to them. And at what point are you shooting yourself in the foot? Part of the success of parenting hinges on our ability to instill in our kids a respect for authority, right? I mean, if they don’t respect the authority that is us, aren’t we sort of fucked?
Love your last line, too. There is something so satisfactory of seeing your kids’ wheels spinning for themselves, isn’t there?
Great post!
As far as the “where do we draw the line?” question goes, for me, the line is drawn between things that grown ups might believe and things they don’t. So I am happy to tell them about Santa and the Tooth Fairy, but I don’t lie to them about God or ghosts or any other “lies” that a significant number of adults never grew out of.
The reason that I’m okay with the lying part is because I want them to understand that the point of ethics is to improve our own and others’ lives. So lying isn’t bad in itself and telling the truth isn’t good in itself. Rather, it’s how and why we lie and tell the truth. When they outgrow Santa and the Tooth Fairy, I think that they’ll look at all the joy they got from the stories and see that the moral point was found in that joy, rather than in the demonstrable truth or falsehood of the story. As a matter of fact, about a year ago, my 7 (almost 8!) year old asked whether the Tooth Fairy was real. It was clear that she had come up with some serious doubts. I responded by asking her whether she wanted to believe the Tooth Fairy was real. She did, so I told her that she could believe it as long as she wanted.
This reminds me of the story told by a friend of mine, a Greek-American mother of two. She was reading Greek myths to her sons one day, when the older stopped her and asked, “How come there are twelve gods here? Is Zeus the same as the God who created Jesus?”
“No,” she said.
“So were they wrong? Or are we?” he asked.
“The answer to that question,” she said, “is what would you rather believe?”
Thanks so much, Ben!
I am telling you that this has been a HOT topic for me. I value honesty to the point where it is a huge pet peeve and deal breaker if people lie. I have totally instilled this in my kids, yet I face/d the same dilemma you described in your article. I despise Christmas, b/c it all centers on a Santa Claus/North Pole lie, for example. I am not religious, so we don’t sing Happy Birthday to Jesus, so that foundation is out. Yet a part of me really felt like I couldn’t compete with society-at-large, so I just went with it, somehow never overtly using Santa in my Christmas prep. I told my kids it’s a fun tradition, and, when they ask if Santa (Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, leprachauns, angels, heaven, God, etc.) is real, I posed the question back to them: “What do you think?” Then, they would say, “Yes [he, she, it] IS real!” This is what I am currently doing with my 6-year-old. My 15- and 17-year-olds are old/mature enough to discuss truth in a way that is developmentally not possible for a small child, and they are very well adjusted and know the value of honesty. They also know the value of tradition…and how to keep tradition as truthful as possible.
Yep, love the “What do you think?” diversion. Way into that. Thanks, Georgia!
And they’ll never let you forget it either!
http://redkiteprayer.com/?p=7967
I love this post because its something that I am really interested in now that I have a 3 year old who has been known to ask “why” 79 tines in a row. (After 79 times I have been known to make stuff up–anything to answer that question and keep it from coming again.)
For the most part, though, I find that being a parent makes me more honest. I’m more likely to encourage him to say “thank you for getting me a present” rather than saying he likes something he doesn’t–teaching him to acknowledge the act of kindness if not the actual gift–even though my first instinct is to effusively exclaim “I love it!” no matter what. In terms of Santa and the Easter Bunny I know I’ve crossed that line (and will again). He has so much of that information already that I am trying to ask questions and let his excitement carry me rather than making statements or supplying information that I know to be false.
I’d love to know how other people handle this, though!
Great point, and I think you’re right: Parenting does make us for honest — with our kids and with ourselves.