Worried about your little darlings not being completely honest with you or frequently telling little (or large) fibs?
Well, then you might want to take a long hard look at your parenting style. Why? Because experts now believe that children who grow up with overly strict parents are quicker to lie — and not only that, they are apparently better at it, too.
According to psychologist and children’s development expert Victoria Talwar at McGill University, children of strict parents are more likely to turn to lying in order to avoid punishment.
To conduct her research, the Independent explains that Talwar examined two schools in West Africa, one with stricter rules and one with more relaxed policies. At both schools, Victoria gathered a group of students and asked them to play the “peeping game,” an exercise that required the kids to guess objects based solely on the sound they made (no looking!).
At one point, the adult conducting the test left the room, and then returned to ask the students if they snuck a peek at the answers. (The last object purposely made a sound that did not correlate with what it was, so the researchers knew if the kids were lying.) While the responses from the students at the “relaxed” school had a mix of liars and truth-tellers, the “strict” school had significantly more liars. Not only that, but the pupils were also better at lying, in general.
And although this research was performed on children who were treated with stricter rules at school, there is according to psychotherapist Philippa Perry every reason to believe that the same goes for children who are living with strict rules at home.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4, Perry explains that when parents run their household with an iron fist, “the child does not feel safe telling the truth,” adding that the blame shouldn’t be placed solely on the children because their dishonesty is a “co-created situation”— and punishing them for lying will only make matters worse.
