The first time you discovered that your child was lying when he was? Parents don’t like to see their children lie. So parents who first discovered that their children were lying are often afraid: "Has my child learned bad things? Why did he learn to lie at such a young age? Is this normal?"
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Education can prevent children from lying? The idea of
is normal. Because everyone thinks that lying is natural, people will be able to do it. If a child is pure in his heart, he will behave well and not lie; if a child learns bad things and learns to use any means to achieve his own goals, he will lie.
So, to stop children from lying, all parents need to do is tell their children that it is wrong to lie from an early age, and then praise the children when they are honest, and criticize and punish them when they are lying. Parents believe, or hope that as long as they do these two things, their children will not lie.
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But reality is very unsatisfactory. Research has found that 96% of children will lie to their parents [1]. Why is this happening to
? Maybe we should look at lying in a different way.
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Are people born to lie?
Developmental psychologists who study the laws of human growth first raised a question about lying: Are people born to lie? The research results found that children aged two or three are unable to lie. Lie seems simple, but in fact it requires very advanced thinking skills. can only have [2] after two or three years old, or even three or four years old. In other words, children are basically unable to lie before they are about three years old.
The most important ability required to lie is to be able to understand that a person's behavior is determined by the person's inner thoughts, not by the actual situation; and, when a person's inner thoughts do not match the actual situation, that is, when a person's inner thoughts are wrong, people will act based on this wrong idea. So, if a child can understand that when the reality is "I ate the chocolate in the drawer", but if he can put a wrong idea "the chocolate was eaten by the cat" into his mother's heart, then the mother will not act based on the reality, but based on her wrong idea - hitting the cat instead of hitting the child. Younger children will think that mothers will always decide their behavior based on the actual situation.
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The acquisition of these abilities requires not only the continuous development of the child's brain, but also the continuous enrichment of children's experience in getting along with people. This means: When children are born, they have no ability to lie. Children don’t lie not because they don’t want it, but because they can’t. When the child has the corresponding ability after he has three or four years old, he will naturally lie. Most of the lying behaviors at this time are to avoid punishment.
So, when you find that a three or four-year-old child is lying, you don’t have to panic. This means that the child is no longer a "little animal", but has made phased progress on the road to integrating into human society. The lying behavior of children cannot be simply equated with the behavior of adults using lying to achieve their immoral goals.
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How to educate children not to lie?
OK. We know the answer to the question "Is human beings born to lie?" The next question is, how should we teach children not to use lying to achieve immoral goals?
To answer this question, let’s learn about the important research results of a moral psychologist.
The core of morality is not reason, but emotion; or it can be said that the core of morality is not knowing right or wrong, but caring for and caring for others.
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A serial killer in the United States said: "I can always kill people...I can ignore their feelings and be completely indifferent. I know what I did is wrong, but I will still let it go without hesitation." [3]
In fact, there are many psychopaths in serial killers who lack normal emotions. Their fear is not because they lack the ability to think rationally about knowing right and wrong, but because they lack the ability to feel the emotional ability of compassion, shame, and guilt. These emotions are the core components of morality - Moral emotions [4]. Moral emotions show that we can care about others, and they are the deepest reasons why we care about whether we are right or wrong. If we don’t care about others, we won’t care about right or wrong and morality.
So, the core of morality is not to know right or wrong. If we know right or wrong, we can stop us from hurting others, then there will not be so many people in prison - how many criminals do not know that their actions are wrong before committing a crime? Emotion is the core of morality.
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Then, if wants children to truly realize that lying is a bad behavior, they cannot just tell their children that lying is wrong, but more importantly, let them realize the harm of lying to others.
Specifically, when a child lies, the following words often do not work for the child:
"To be honest, it is a good child"
or "If you steal chocolate, I am not angry, but you must honestly tell me if you have eaten it."
Because the child may be afraid that parents will not keep their words in mind, or they may think that parents know that they will be sad, but it is better for parents to know that they are eating it secretly.
On the contrary, parents can say this:
"For mothers, the most uncomfortable thing is that you don't tell the truth to me. If I find you lie to me, I will be very sad, just like you will be very sad when you find that your mother lies to you. If you can tell the truth to mothers, mom will be happy."
Lying is really not just a matter of right or wrong.
References:
[1] Bo Bronson, Ashley Merriman. Great education shock. Xia Jing. Shenyang: Wanjuan Publishing Company, 2011:60.
[2] Peter Smith, Helen Coy, Mark Blaze. Understanding the growth of children. Kou Yu et al. Beijing: People's Posts and Telecommunications Press, 2006:287-290.
[3] Paul Bloom. The source of good and evil. Qingtu. Hangzhou: Zhejiang People's Publishing House, 2015:31.
Author | Wang Lin Master of Education, University of Tennessee, USA, focuses on children and family research,
Review | Fan Chunlei Associate Researcher at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
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