More Than A Number

A new study conducted among parents reveal that mom and dad stretch the truth more often than thought. These instances include the existence of mythical creatures to odd consequences of kids’ behavior and actions parents come up with creative tales to shape a child’s emotions and behaviors.

Lee Kang, study researcher of the University Of Toronto, Canada stated that her team and she were surprised by how often parenting by lying takes place. She went on to state that even the parents who most strongly promoted the importance of honesty engaged in parenting by lying. The research team acknowledged that their work was still preliminary, however highlighted the fact that they have managed to bring to the forefront an issue that is rarely studied. Parenting by lying has its own consequences such as a child not learning certain rules like why they should do a certain task or why they should obey a certain rule, if the excuses given for these are lies. It was also noted that lying maybe preventing learning opportunities for the child.

In order to carry out the study researchers devised nine hypothetical scenarios that parents had to shape a child’s behavior or tell a lie to make the child happy. In one study about 130 undergraduates read each scenario and indicated on a defined scale whether their parents had said something similar to them. An alarming 90% of the students gave a positive answer indicating that they were told at least one of the lies given in the scenario.