Dear parents: never let your kids lie, at any age. It might be cute when they're 3 or 4 or 5, but if you don't gently tell them that "we don't tell lies, we always tell the truth" it will become a habit they will carry into adulthood.
While, on its face, it seems like a good idea to discourage lying, presenting children with such a binary approach to deception might leave them underprepared for the "bullshit" (marketing, propaganda, etc...) they will encounter in the real world.
EDIT: I'm not a parent and don't want to offer parenting advice. My point is simply that saying "we never lie" seems overly-reductive, versus something more nuanced like "lying is bad." I would worry about creating the expectation that most people don't lie, or even that good people never lie (e.g. white lies).
Your kids will inevitably catch you lying and their understanding of "lying is bad" would become "lying is bad if you get caught" and "You're allowed to be outraged when catching others' lies".
Teaching your kids how and when to lie, now that's a very tricky thing that I don't have a grip on.
Do you have any evidence to back up the assertion that lying too much at 4/5 is how one becomes a pathological liar?
Anyway there've been instances where after losing at football or Minecraft or whatever, the younger nephew has launched on a long monologue to us about how the contest was unfair, that really he should have won, that actually if you look at it a certain way he did win, yes he won and his older brother lost and... on to increasingly fantastic made up story about what happened.
It's not so much lying as a "revisionist history" with a magical realism element. It's almost like... grit gone wrong. I.e. grit would be, "I failed once but I won't accept failure permanently and next time I'll try a new tack" versus this is, "I can't accept failure therefore I must justify and explain why I actually was perfect."
I find this behavioral tendency worrying.
Abolish Christmas, and then get back to me.
There's more than one Christmas.
Definitely a lie. Saying he's not is another lie, even if you're lying to yourself.
If the category "Lies" is identical to the category "Not Literally True", then it seems to be fairly useless.
Different things get dispelled that changes their foundation that Santa relies on. Such as magic isn't real. Without magic, how can Santa perform his job?
As they get older, it becomes 'childish' by peers to believe in things people 2 years younger believe.
Media created for the demographic starts hinting at the possibility of parents being Santa.
They're fed enough information over the years to piece it together by themselves.
A basic facility with lying is a fundamental social skill. Unless you intend for your children to be socially awkward / socially ineffective, lying is necessary.
The point, much like physical strength or any other sort of double-edged human ability, is to plug it into their broader moral framework, to guide when and for what purposes and to what degree.
I hear this a lot but do you have any examples?
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1021369327584
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0261927X9514300...
https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/11808412/personality_a...
This was like, five minutes on google scholar. I'm not going to pretend it's a slam dunk "here's a paper from the esteemed Harvard Professor of Lying-is-Awesome, presenting the grand unified theory of 'deceptiveness and social skills are overlapping traits'," but it's pretty much the null hypothesis.
I've known a handful of pathological liars, one of whom is my nephew. My nephew's caregivers are not model parents. They are extremely hot and cold: either ignoring the kids for hours at a time, or screaming at the kids over every trivial accident and annoyance. Example: nephew was pouring a glass of water, knocked the cup on the floor, and his parents screamed at him and hit him until he was broken down in tears.
Newphew's day-to-day routine is an exercise in walking on eggshells to avoid triggering mom and dad's short temper. Anytime his parent's said a word to him, nephew assumed he'd done something bad again. He began lying at a very young age as a defense mechanism to avoid punishment.
He became very distrustful of adults. We had a family get-together once where my nephew was playing with toy dinosaurs. I walk up behind him and say "hey buddy what are doing over there" and he immediately startles and says "I didn't do anything!"
I noticed that he started lying habitually. And even lying about things that didn't even matter. If he had a bowl of cereal for breakfast, he'd tell everyone he had a bagel. If he got up early, he said he'd slept in late. If he watched Finding Nemo, he'd say he watched Spongebob.
I started challenging him on these things: "why did you just tell me ate a bagel? I was right here fixing the computer when you rolled out of bed at 10am to eat a bowl of cereal this morning." He'd double down, "well actually I got up early and ate a bagel when you didn't see me. And then I had cereal afterward." I'd say "why are you lying to me about something so stupid? I'm not mad, I just don't see why you'd lie about it. What's the point?" "I'm not lying, I swear!"
He's 11 years old and his lies are getting bigger, more absurd. He told me his friend's dad is the president of the Pokemon factory and he can get any rare Pokemon card he wants for free, and that he gets to ride around in his friends Lamborghini.
I literally think he's lying for sport now, like a game to see what he can get away with. He's going to have a hard time making and keeping friends if he doesn't break the habit soon.
I think all of this started from bad parenting. The kid didn't feel safe in his own home, and his defense mechanism became habit, which then became a pathological obsession.
I suspect there's two factors at play; one that he sometimes gets away with it, where we can't be bothered to double check, and second that he may get a little 'thrill' from lying and getting away with it, moreso than the adverse reaction from being called out on it. Mind you, that said, negative attention is also attention, so subconsciously for him it's likely a win-win.
Anyway, it's still annoying. It's not (yet) serious things, just mainly some responsibility dodging behaviour.
Everybody lies. Sometimes it's good, e.g. in order to avoid someone having a surprise spoiled. Or sometimes it's inconsequential, like telling someone that you're fine because you don't have the mental energy to get into what's bothering you (and you know they won't let it go if you were to just say that). Sometimes it's bad.
Telling your kids "we always tell the truth" is a lie, because you don't. And it has a high likelihood of (as a sibling comment said) making them unprepared for people who do lie, at least while they're still young. And you can bet that the first time they catch you in a lie, it will be that much worse.
And from there, it just builds on.
To the liars out there don't think there is something wrong with you.
You have your purpose too - Google psychopathy or dark triad in the work place and know that Managers actually use/need you guys too, not just honest Abe.
Basically we still live with a stone age level of understanding of personality traits and their pros and cons.
But if everyone understands there is a diff between a banana tree, a redwood and a cactus. All having different needs and personalities, only then do we get a good looking botanical garden.
Murder might also have a use, but I feel free to pass judgement on it.