بچه ها در مورد خوردن شیرینی ها دروغ می گویند

Who can resist an unmanned chocolate cake?

Shall we lick the top?

Yummy scrummy!

But how best to cover your tracks?

Someone mysterious sneaked in when we were

Someone mysterious sneaked in?

Yeah!

Lying is a really important developmental skill. It tells us that the children can work out what’s in someone else’s mind in order to try and deceive them.

A thief came in and took that.

They flew down, ate it and then flew back!

So, an elephant and a giant bird came and smudged the cake?

Yeah!

To test the children’s lying skills at different ages, we left them alone with a rigged gumball machine and told them not to touch it. First, we see how the four-year-olds handle the situation.

I want a sweet now.

Are you going to turn it?

No!

Do you want to turn it? Turn it!

Whoa! And it’s gone!

Oh no! They made Zoe turn it.

Do not turn it any more! Nobody turn it any more, OK?

I just keep doing it by accident!

Lying is a very subtle skill. They frequently get uncovered at this age. They haven’t got the ability to problem-solve their way out of it.

They’re not developmentally advanced enough to lie so they tell the truth.

What happened?!

It was Zoe!

He told me to turn this thing.

Elie, did you tell Zoe to turn it?

Well, she didn’t she yeah, but she listened.

She listened! It was her fault for listening!

Now it’s the turn of the six-year-olds.

Smarties! Sweets!

They still turn the handle. They still gorge on sweets.

Yeah!

They still panic about getting caught.

You guys, why did you touch that?

But then they get rather more resourceful.

I’ve got a really, really good plan. We’ve got to say one lie, we’ve got to say one lie.

This guy’s worked it out that you can lie, and as long as you’ve got the rest of the group complicit with you (OK), you get away with it.

The Smarties all came out!

I’m getting lots of apologies but I kind of want to know what happened.

I was running like this, yeah? So then we fell and banged it. So it was my fault.

How ironic for parents that at the point at which their children learn to lie, they need to celebrate that as a huge developmental stage.

It shows how smart the kid is, even though it also shows that you’re going to be in a lot of trouble as a parent from now on.