Projo Offbeat Blog

A new study reveals that parents often lie to their children.

I thought I'd share the information, even though I realize it's news only to people who've never been parents, and anyone over the age of 12 who's never had a parent.

The story is carried on the Web site livescience.com under the headline "Parents Lie to Children Surprisingly Often."

Apparently the headline writer isn't a parent.

The story quotes study researcher Kang Lee of the University of Toronto saying, "We are surprised by how often parenting by lying takes place. Our findings showed that even the parents who most strongly promoted the importance of honesty with their children engaged in parenting by lying."

Apparently Kang Lee isn't a parent either.

The story reports, "From claiming the existence of magical creatures to odd consequences of kids' actions, parents often come up with creative tales to shape a child's behaviors and emotions.

"Many parents reported telling their children that bad things would happen if they didn't go to bed or eat certain foods," the story continues. "One mother recalled telling her child that if he didn't finish his food he would get pimples all over his face."

I'm sure that most people go into parenting with good honest intentions, but then they realize that you can't reason with a 4-year-old mid-tantrum. Telling a kid there's a monster in the woods might keep him from wandering away. (Okay, scary stories are also kind of fun.) And when they get older, you realize that it doesn't do anyone any good to detail all the dumb things we did when we were young.

According to the story, more than 70 percent of the parents surveyed said they teach their children that lying is unacceptable. Even so, nearly 80 percent of parents admitted lying to their kids.

I'm guessing the other 20 percent lied to the researchers.

 Tags  children lying parents

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