Always tell kids the truth (2019) | Hacker News Reader

Always tell kids the truth (2019)

outsideonline.com

146 pointsmooreds251 comments

I think about lying a lot. I practice Buddhism and take the fourth precept "abstain from false speech" very seriously. I don't lie to my kids, I don't lie to my wife, I don't lie to my parents. If my wife asks "does this shirt make me look good?" I tell her the honest truth. Of all the things in Buddhism, this is probably the one that's had the most clear impact on improving my life. I suggest it for everyone.

I think "false speech" is a better term than lying. False speech means you intend to mislead someone. You can sometimes do it by telling the truth (double-speak) or by not saying anything at all. Those aren't "lies" technically, but they are false speech as it's designed to mislead the listener.

You can also tell "lies" that are not false speech in the case of jokes or stories. As long as you're sincerely not trying to mislead the listener it's ok to not be literally true.

Most common reason why i lie: Working around other people's thinking.

A common lie is that I'm in a relationship with my "girlfriend". In truth we just live together in a flat, spend some time together for some needs, but are otherwise independent persons. If i say we are together, people draw wrong conclusions. If i say we are just flatmates, people draw wrong conclusions.

With people projecting their own ideas of the world onto everything, truthful talking stops being useful. So i fall back to replaying some common stereotypes so people don't bother me anymore and let me do my own stuff.

I'm confused. There are terms for what you are describing. If the relationship is also sexual then you're friends with benefits. If it is not than you are friends/roommates.

I guess its a bit strange to say, "They are not my girlfriend, we're friends with benefits" but if your goal isnt to lie then... That comes with a price of being awkward at times. Like OP's example of when their sig other asks if X looks good on them.

The honest answer is not always the easiest one.

I also don't understand GP's comment and am curious about this non-girlfriend flatmate situation.

Then you get their reasoning perfectly! I use "SO" online, but we're financially independent cohabitating partners because our state doesn't recognize domestic partnerships. If I say "fiance" then I have to answer when we're getting married (we aren't), and if I say "girlfriend" or "roommate", it doesn't convey that we are each other's beneficiaries, emergency contacts, requests for power of attorney, etc, so I just use her name and leave out the relationship in conversations altogether.

I was surprised to discover how common this was after I tried to explain and found out many of the couples we knew and worked with who are "married" aren't.

I hear partner often to describe this sort of relationship. Sure that work?

I guess that's exactly what the GGP wants to avoid explaining by pretending the roommate is the girlfriend :P

Problem is, people want simple answers, and i don't always have simple answers worked out for them, nor do i want to spend much time doing that.

> when their sig other asks if X looks good on them

This is some stereotype, which doesn't happen for me. This is what i meant with "drawing wrong conclusions".

I don't feel like this is lying ir false speech or anything. I am from the suburbs of a medium sized city but distinctly not from that city, as my home is across across the river and in a different state. Still when I travel and people ask "where are you from?" answering that I'm from that city is the easiest way to give the correct picture. Someone making polite conversation doesn't want to hear this explanation, if I'm chatting with an Uber driver I'll just say the city because it's easier, if I'm making new friends I would explain. I don't think there is any lie in either explanation it's just different shades of a communication in a world full of non-binary situations.

Are you from Cincinnati / Covington area?. That's the first place that came to mind based on "across the river and in a another state"

There are tons of these places: New York, Portland, Memphis, St Louis. Major rivers tend to be state lines as well as population centers.

There's also the entire rest of the world, of which the US is ~ 5% of ;).

That's true, I'm probably just betraying my bias from my own home state by what comes to mind first :)

Actually you were right, I am talking about NKY/Cincinnati

Hah! My Ohio bias pays off for a change!

This can be compatible with my approach of not lying. I think as long as it's the least misleading way to answer the question then it's ok in most casual cases.

I've been having this myself just having moved to Texas. People ask where we're from and we most recently moved from California but my wife and I both have a long history of living in many places. I feel people want a simple answer but it's hard to give one that gives them the right idea.

“We’ve moved a lot, so not really anywhere — but most recently California.”

People can then take the easy fact, ask more about California, or ask about other places if they genuinely care.

Individually, words are very crude low resolution descriptors. English is actually pretty nuanced because we've inherited so many words for the same things form different languages, and assigned them slightly different meanings, but it's still a big problem. I notice this particularly in discussions relating to philosophy, people very often talk right past each other because they're assuming different meanings of the words they're using.

I wouldn’t say that’s lying, just an somewhat inaccurate simplification… language is always spoken in a shared context that, like Huffman encoding, assigns short terms to common situations (wife, girlfriend, flatmate) and things outside those common situations may require more tokens to express accurately.

[Redacted: please practice self control, lay down your screens, walk barefoot on the grass, you need to disengage]

You only need to be around kids for a few minutes to realize why we are so flawed as human beings and why some of us fail to learn even the most basic life lessons.

There's a whole spectrum of speech, even without immoral intentions.

too heavy truth, cold truth, harsh truth, slightly delayed truth, silence hinting at truth, maybe truth, minuscule bit of truth, coated truth, swerving around truth, empathetic balanced truth

you don't tell your kids "we're all dying" you adapt life around their spirit, and when they enjoyed enough semi ignorant bliss you can let the whole thing in plain sight

> you don't tell your kids "we're all dying"

I don't see any problem with being honest about life and death. And having hangups about this is not helpful in my opinion. It's one of the areas where not lying is most important. What you need to be careful with is your approach, because if you just say "we're all dying" a 4 year old might panic because you haven't been very clear. It sounds immediate.

My boy that recently turned five has known about death for quite some time already. It’s not complicated, and not traumatic. We walked through a graveyard, and he started asking what the place and all the stones were for, and one question led to another. He clearly thought about, and asked about it for a little while, but hardly any longer.

Unless she is a terror, telling your wife that her shirt doesn't look great isn't exactly a profile in courage.

It's only when the stakes get much higher (e.g. life-time earning potential, self-esteem) that you will lie completely and earnestly without a second thought. And because the stakes are real and it is essential that the audience for your lie believes you, you will first have to lie to yourself, to get rid of those subtle tells that the human brain has evolved to detect.

So, when you say that there is no possibility that the disparate social outcomes of various ethnic groups has a genetic basis despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, you will be lying, but it won't feel like lying because the first person you fooled was you.

So I wouldn't over-think the lying stuff.

Btw, have you considered that maybe your wife -- in fact, a lot of people -- want to be lied to? So when she asks you if she looks old and tired and your reply, honestly, in the affirmative, perhaps you're improving your life, but are you sure you improved hers?

Lies to “protect people” only serve to protect yourself from a challenging but useful conversation.

Nobody wants to be lied to. My wife doesn’t have to ask “do you really like it?” because she knows if I didn’t I would say so. She can rely on me giving her an honest opinion about anything. (Of course whether or not she cares about my opinion is beside the point)

Imagine you cooked for someone and they didn’t like the food, would you rather they lied to you and say they loved it? Or were honest?

I challenge you to give me an example where you’d prefer to be deliberately misled by someone.

Lying is a natural part of Human experience and communication. It's part of the game. Do you not lie to your kids about Santa Claus (or whatever local magical creature it is)?

I rarely have to lie though because most of the time I can leave out information and be just as effective.

I’m serious when I say I do not lie. My daughter is only 2 but I plan to simply tell her Santa Claus is a story we like to pretend is real.

Frankly I don’t understand why she has to be duped into believing Santa Claus is real at all.

Of course she will lie and be lied to, but it won’t come from me.

I believe you, I just don’t think it’s realistic for the general population.

I am a very honest person (I have a terrible and fierce shame response when I lie). But, I tried to measure it once. I recorded everything that I said for several days with a truth level. I was deceptive more often than I thought I was.

For an example, do you not ever get the question, “What are you thinking about?” when your mind is off daydreaming on something potentially shameful? Maybe I just have a lot of shame. IDK.

Sam Harris did a great long form essay where he described this concept very well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lying_(Harris_book)

He even goes into detail about Santa.

EDIT: I think the bit about Santa is only in the audiobook, but he talks about it in this article: https://www.samharris.org/blog/the-high-cost-of-tiny-lies

As far as a question like that, I might not answer it literally truthfully. I’d probably say something like “oh it’s nothing.” Both me and them understand I don’t mean I was literally not thinking about anything, I mean to say I don’t want to talk about it. As long as that’s understood by everyone it’s not false speech.

To practise honesty builds character, not just because of the rigour of knowing before speaking, but also because one must apply honesty maturely as it befits the situation. Character is necessary for social trust.

Unless you espouse the monetary model of trust. ^_^

I'm genuinely curious, since you claim to never lie..

How do you resolve Kant and Lying to the Murderer at the Door dilemma [0]?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative#Lying_t...

I mean, I just made the decision to quit lying years ago and haven’t encountered any situation I can recall where I felt lying would be helpful.

It’s probably possible to come up with contrived situations where lying is preferred, but I’m not convinced these situations occur in my life. (If I lived in North Korea I would not have the luxury of approaching my life in this way.)

That said: Kant’s dilemma is so contrived it’s practically useless. It assumes you can predict the future. Lying to a murderer might actually make things worse.

Sam Harris does talk about this dilemma in his essay on Lying if you’re interested in a more educated take: https://archive.org/details/pdfy-x4ByD3mMjIdTMC0H (page 13)

Does Buddhism say anything about using false speech for humor?

Misleading statements to break expectations of the person to make them laugh

The philosophy of lying is quite interesting. I like to say that a lie is truth with an expiration date. If you only knew the lie, and it never was "corrected", to you it would only be the truth. If you were a brain in a vat, and you never discovered you were a brain in a vat, then to you _your truth_ is that you are not a brain in a vat.

Because lying is a function of time (duration, expiration), there is also a relevant short-term and long-term factor. We tend to lie less to people we are in it for the long-term with because there is a greater likelihood the lie "expires". We lie more to strangers because we will never see them again and the lie never expires - the lie _is_ the truth from their perspective.

There also exist "factual truths" and "emotional truths". Factual truths, as the OP discusses, are invariant over time (for the most part, assuming we are omniscient). Logical people love factual truths. Emotional people hate them. Emotional truths vary over time as a function of one's emotional state ("it feels true to me!"). It is not always prudent to tell the factual truth when someone is in their worst or best possible emotional state. Generally speaking, it is prudent to adapt to the situation. If you are in a long-term situation (a repeating pattern), stick to the invariant truth. If you are sensitive to people's emotional states, tolerating some variable truth can be an invaluable social lubricant. I often find that programmers (as logicians) compress eveything into invariants, which encourages a non-negotiable adherence to invariant truth, but this can equally isolate them to the rest of the world which does not operate exclusively with invariants. Programmers say "it is simply the case" while everyone else says "it depends."

Finally, lying creates and magnifies divergent realities between the sender and receiver. At first glance, this is not so problematic - _everyone_ occupies divergent realities - we are different individuals after all. We want to create convergent realities with those with whom we collaborate (a non-zero-sum game) and divergent realities with those who may defect (a zero-sum game). Case in point, we mislead and misdirect the enemy during times of war. All animals do this. It is for this reason lying is often associated with self-interest: we lie (create a divergent reality) to privilege our own interests. If we were transparent about our interests, we would simply create a convergent reality (i.e. tell the truth). Often, we lie because we want to have our cake and eat it too ("I can go to this party AND comfort my parents in telling them I am staying home"). Sometimes, we lie because we are truly acting in the best interests of someone else (a compassionate lie), but it can be hard to make the case that "they really didn't want to know" (if so, why did they ask?) and that you are a better modeler of their preferences than they are (why not ask them directly?). Compassionate lies exist, but they are far less common than self-interested lies disguised as compassionate ones.

As a general heuristic, I recommend always telling the factual truth, but possessing the capability to recognize, understand and commuicate emotional truths for the right situations.

My parents never lied to me. They taught me how to read and critically observe my surroundings. They introduced me to the library and encouraged me to use it. When they discussed controversial subjects with their peers, they did not ask me to leave the room. They never preached or lectured to me, but often questioned my understanding. When difficult subjects arose, they offered clear and logical discourse. We sometimes disagreed, but they were always willing to listen and discuss. They introduced me to new ideas and allowed me to do the same for them.

If I'm allowed to guess, your parents must be very smart.

In the article, the author wrote

> As a parent, though, I’ve discovered that there’s a fine line between omission and deception.

I found that, discovering and maintaining the fine line requires significant amount of knowledge and life experience. Often, only the wise ones knows how to respond to those challenging questions appropriately.

Sadly, many parents I know of struggles when facing difficult inquiries from their kids, so they end up telling lies upon lies just to send their kids away (in another words, to escape from the question).

Take my parents for example, back when I was still a child, when I asked them how I was born, the two typical answers they offered were: 1) "We picked you up near the trash can", or 2) "You'll figure it out yourself when you're older". They also used this escape strategy when ever I ask them something they don't or unable to provide answer to. As result, I realized it fairly quickly in a young age that my parents might not be a reliable source of information.

If I'm a parent, I would probably never escape the questions like that. Some kids are smart and curious, parents need to help them to navigate in this sea of knowledge, instead of play funny games with them when the kid is actually seeking for help.

By the way, I think "how I was born?" is actually a good test question for parents. You can figure out many things by simply observe how the parents react to this question. Smart parents can often quickly figure out a fitting metaphor that satisfies the curious kid, and at the same time without bring up the awkward (and hard to understand) concept of sex. On the other hand, I literally saw some parents doing weird hand gestures in front their kid trying to explain the detail, please don't do this, it's embarrassing and the kids probably will not understand.

> If I'm a parent, I would probably never escape the questions like that.

The best laid plans

What did your parents told you about Santa Claus or other children mythical creatures when you were a child?

Not op, but a parent. When my kid was young we left that question deliberately vague. I didn't want him to be the kid who goes around and says in Kindergarten "my dad says Santa Clause doesn't exist", at the same time deliberately encouraging a belief into something I know is not true felt morally wrong, so when he asked if Santa is real I woulf typically answer along the lines of "I'm not sure, what do you think?"

I don't remember ever believing in Santa when I was a kid, but I also didn't grow up in anglo sphere where that question seems quite important the growing up process.

Similar here. When they were two we explained that Santa was as real as Mickey Mouse. They got it immediately. They know the mouse stands for something, and so does Santa. We have fun with it all.

Christmas season is so much easier when you don't have to compete with a fictional, fat, jolly, magic man. The spirit behind it has value, and we celebrate that, along with other traditions.

I rarely lie to my children. I always encouraged my children not to go around saying "there is no Santy/Santa". But at the same time, I really resent the omnipresent peer pressure from other adults to actively maintain the lie for their precious one's benefit. They would never expect their Muslim/Hindu friends to so this, but as an atheist, all you get is disapproving looks.

It's a game, one I don't play, but if you ruin kid fun of course you'll get eyerolls... regardless of your background.

My recovery is just to own it, and say that I may not believe anymore, but "I'm proud of you sweety for believing". Kids won't take that as condescending cause the notion of Santa disbelievers is built-in.

I think my kid flat out told their friends at pre-school that Santa Clause died. Which lead to some very interesting conversations. We watched the cartoon film Klaus on Netflix (would recommend) and that's how they internalized it. =)

> I didn't want him to be the kid who goes around and says in Kindergarten "my dad says Santa Clause doesn't exist",

My eldest actually did that in kindergarten (barnehage) except that he apparently didn't justify it as being my opinion but a simple fact. When my wife went to pick him up one day she was very politely asked to explain to him that this caused some distress to some of the other children. She did that, he understood and kept his opinions on the subject to himself.

> I don't remember ever believing in Santa when I was a kid, but I also didn't grow up in anglo sphere where that question seems quite important the growing up process.

Not Anglosphere, more specifically US I think. I'm 66 and from England, I don't recall any of my childhood friends ever behaving as though they believed in Father Christmas and I'm even more confident that they would not have later claimed to their children that he existed. As far as I can remember I always knew that Christmas presents came from parents and relatives; after all most of the packages had cards on them saying things like 'Love to .. from auntie ..'.

When my daughter is old enough to ask I'm just going to tell her it's a story just like Frozen that we like to play pretend around. I don't see why she has to be misled into thinking Santa is real in order to celebrate Christmas like any other kids.

Kids are incredible at pretending!

How do you believe you turned out? Are you <general positive emotional wellbeing>?

I think honesty is a pretty good general policy, but I've also found that kids will find weird things to be hurt by, whether you tell the truth or lie. Because they're still developing, and because adults do that too.

I'm sure this guy is not doing this, and he has a lot of other reasons for wanting to be honest. However, I will say that whether a child is aggrieved by an action of yours should be given due weight. If your child rarely behaves like this, then perhaps it's a stronger signal. On the other hand if your child thinks that failing to cut the crust off the bread is right next to murder in the ten commandments, then you have to take that into account as well.

As a naive non parent I'd like your opinion here.

I can see the truth in "children are developing and during that development they're more suseptable to be hurt by things we consider arbitrary as an adult", but the article raises the big question of what is the responsibility of the parent here? Children may be more or less sensitive, but doesn't the core thesis of the article, that it is the responsibility of a parent to be honest (+open and truthful) a good basis? Isn't that kind of relationship an excellent basis and foundation for the child when approaching all other relationships?

For sure, a relationship of honesty and trust is a good default. And I'm not saying he shouldn't do that. However, one thing that struck me about the article is how hard he took his daughter's disappointment.

On the one hand, I'm familiar with that feeling, because I hate disappointing my own children. On the other hand, I've also recognized the inevitability of this, because even without encouragement, the kids form unwarranted expectations are disappointed somewhat routinely.

Thank you, that's very informative.

> failing to cut the crust off the bread

Is this an autism/sensory issues thing, or just an American thing? I'm assuming most cultures don't bother cutting off bread crusts.

Not OP but I would imagibe its just an example of a nornal tantrum of a young child.

Some picky eaters don't like bread crusts. I swore I would never be the guy who cuts them off, but let's just say that no plan survives the enemy.

This is unfortunately a ‘contagious’ preference. My kid never complained about bread crust or vegetables until she started school, where she was exposed to other kids with picky preferences.

Fortunately, it is mostly temporary. I hated crusts as a child but now adore them.

Small kids sometimes have random temporary preferences they make big deal of. Pretty often uncoprehensible.

Sometimes it's also because we change as adults and kids lack the experience to properly communicate why they're upset.

I remember I had battles with my parents over certain foods that legitimately tasted awful to me as a kid and made me gag (and then later as an adult some of those foods taste fine).

For some kids it's probably the normal tantrum/boundary testing but I would not be surprised if for some kids they have a significantly different eating experience with even something simple like bread crust.

Even for adults, consider that cilantro/coriander tastes like soap for some people. And that's just one easy small example where we're pretty sure we know what gene causes it.

(OT) To all parents on HN that are not from the US: Have you ever tried reading parenting.stackexchange.com, which is (I assume) mostly used by US-american users. I find the different mindset that seems common to American parenting very far removed from the parenting style I experience around me (in Europe), it's almost shocking. But as such an impression is, of course, very subjective, I'm wondering if others have found the same?

My impression is that parents in the US (and Japan) have a much more specific idea of what a correct lifepath for a child looks like.

In the Netherlands (Europe), I felt like basically following the system would land them wherever was appropriate based on their aptitude and inclinations. There was basically no better path to follow than public education. Extracurriculars don’t factor into anything, sports are just sports, and solely for recreation. No extra lessons outside of school just to make the entrance exam for your junior high school.

I feel like this lack of need to worry about the future lends itself well to a much more relaxed style of parenting.

I don’t feel like this is true in the US (or Japan), where which school(s) you go to has a significant effect on your future, so parents have to consider everything from the start.

I don't know about the Netherlands, but at least for the UK and France which university you go to is extremely important. At least there's a big divide between top schools and the rest.

In the UK at least, this is only true for a certain type or - shudder - class of person. For the vast majority of people, just getting the right course is the reason for the choice of university to attend.

Certainly, for the vast majority of people I've ever known, getting a spot at Oxbridge not only was not 'extremely important' - it wasn't even a consideration.

> Certainly, for the vast majority of people I've ever known, getting a spot at Oxbridge not only was not 'extremely important' - it wasn't even a consideration.

Having spent a bunch of time working with people on these particular universities' access programs (where they essentially spend a lot of time and money encouraging more people to apply, especially from disadvantaged backgrounds), this "consideration" is often a deeply ingrained bias in the school teaching staff.

There are large numbers of students who are both good enough to go to Oxbridge and would thrive there, who aren't getting that opportunity because their teachers have already decided it's "not for them".

You don't have to be talking about Oxford or Cambridge for this to be true. There's a world of difference between warwick and Wolverhampton universities for example

Or Newcastle, or Durham, or St Andrews, or St Martin's (if you're that way inclined), or... .

I know, the list is longer than Oxford and Cambridge. But it's a neat shorthand.

I guess maybe the Netherlands seems special in that all education is already split into 3 levels after elementary school, with similar (corresponding) levels for university education.

If any distinction is made, it’ll be on the ‘level’ of education you went to, not what school.

Any examples to share? I am a parent in Europe but have lived in the US (specifically the Bay Area) but before I had kids so I didn't pay a huge amount of attention to parenting styles.

That said, I expect users of parenting.stackexchange.com are much more educated and wealthy than the average parent and don't really represent a generic American approach to parenting.

Second hand, but friends moved over to the US to find that kids would watch TV in kindergarten. This would just be absolutely unacceptable in most parts of Europe

It’s unacceptable in the US too, but some of the private schools I have visited have had TVs in the classroom to occasionally play educational media.

Is it? I don't know any parents who haves kids under 5 who don't use tablets on a regular basis.

You’re moving the goalpost. Using a tablet at home is different than watching TV for 7 hours at school.

you are meeting lazy parents, which is sadly standard nowadays, my kids 4 and 6 never used tablet and phone (ok, I let them press button occasionally or they can stop alarm clock or timer when I have full hands, but their total use would be in minutes, I occasionally show them their photos/videos or picture of something we talk about), they watch children tv shows on TV ~45mins before dinner and 1-2 kid movies on weekend.

Yeah I've got lazy with the TV but I still feel their use of technology is healthier than at most of the people/children since everywhere I look people just put phones/tablets to hands of little kids and still get them hooked at early age, let alone potentially ruin their eyesight development.

Late reply, but my general impression is that US parents tend to have much more a view of "ownership" over their children. By that I mean you read a lot of views that seem to indicate that parents really consider children their property and they should be able to decide everything. I find it quite baffling considering the very strong importance of personal liberties in the US.

> I find it quite baffling considering the very strong importance of personal liberties in the US.

It's because in the US the thinking regarding such things seems to revolve around rights and never mentions duties. In Europe we tend to view our duties to our children differently.

In my view one cannot have liberty without duty. That is to say, there is no such thing as perfect liberty.

Instead of saying that children are their property I would say that they are their responsibility. In many countries parents are happy to outsource their kids education to the government. In the US parents want to actively be part of the process. That's the personal liberty aspect I guess.

Glancing at the front page of that site, I see a lot of questions that most parents I know would respond to by saying "you're worrying too much", or something polite which would really translate to "lol wut?"

As I'm sure you know, but which bears repeating: parenting.stackexchange.com, or really any other online community, is not representative of most people. Communities like that are self-selected and insular. Even open communities create and reinforce their own perspective. There are kinds of questions which become acceptable to ask, and kinds of responses which are acceptable to provide, but only within that small shard of reality.

The main story isn't very believable. The mom makes one joke on a trip where presumably they spent hours talking about how amazing the Grand Canyon is, including while viewing it. Both children ignored everything else said, focused on that joke, and one of them proceeded to explain to their mother that it wasn't that great like she said. It more sounds like the kids just weren't that happy to spend hours freezing to see the Grand Canyon.

Also, let's face it: The Grand Canyon isn't that amazing. It is a giant hole in the ground, literally.

When you contextualize it, the geological process are awe-inspiring, but the end result is, as nature goes, a solid "nice". That's it. It doesn't take a "joke" from the mom to produce that reaction.

I'm from Europe, surrounded by much natural beauty, but to this day the Grand Canyon was one of the most profound experiences for me.

I've been there too, and it was pretty spectacular.

The thing is, it takes a certain reference point to appreciate. A more mature one.

For kids, and the younger they are, much of their daily lives of filled with continual new and overwhelming experiences. Every experience is new or very fresh. Experiences like "I've never been this cold before", or "The sun is too hot" are just as overwhelming as "That is a very deep crack in the ground", but discomfort is also more immediate, and they haven't learned to attenuate and ignore discomfort signals like adults have.

Likewise, they have less grasp of time. When you are six, or ten, a decade is your whole life or more, and waiting an hour seems like forever, while for you and me, it is a blink in the day. 100 years for kids is nigh unimaginable, and an appreciation for the untold years it took to erode the grand canyon is unavailable, mentally.

So a visit to something like the grand canyon can be less than impressive.

It does make me wonder what a thousand year old being would appreciate, that I would find uninteresting or unimaginable.

My wife is from Europe and loves our National Parks, she would tell you the Grand Canyon was her #1 least favorite by far. Yosemite was probably her favorite.

You are eloquent for a child. How old are you? Have you learned what a 'category error' is? :o)

Oh come on, how fragile is your ego! Take a joke! :o)

Kids are fascinated by little bugs right in front of them. Adults are reward-hacking themselves stupid.

I was lucky to see Grand Canyon for the first time at night, with full moon and no people around. It was magical. Only us (four people) and the tiny lights of trekkers in the bottom. And the beautiful soft light that the Moon provided the canyon with.

The next morning it looked great, but I knew we had experienced it in a much better way.

I strongly disagree. For me, the Grand Canyon remains the most awe-inspiring thing I have ever seen.

Coming off another week in the national parks (this time, Utah) - I’d encourage you to go see more/others.

GC can be pretty cool, but I’d not put it in my top 10 parks. Mainly because of the people and the mares ruin the effect on a hike. And, staying at the top is a bit boring.

For my money, Zion or Yosemite are better. Both with their own set of people related problems.

Off topic, but was at Bryce a couple days ago and some guy was FaceTiming at 7:30am filling the entire canyon with his and the other people’s voices. Terrible manners! Ruined the first 30m of the hike.

Yes but the fact that your parent post exists is proof that not everybody thinks like that - and bored kids are not the most reflecting, awe-inspirable human beings.

For those who are not in awe of the Grand Canyon, you might like these parody postcards/art. The Grand Canyon is the second image in the list: https://ambersharedesign.com/products/subpar-parks-postcard-...

The first time I saw the Canyon in person I kinda went "Oh, cool." I think I was 16.

I saw it again a decade later, and got an overnight permit to hike and camp at the Indian Garden campground.

I have never seen anything more awe-inspiring than the view from Plateau Point. I cannot do it justice with words.

I cannot recommend that hike and view enough.

I lie to my kids all the time (about unimportant stuff). I make the lie outragous and if they seem to take me seriously I pile on. I say I'm a disc golf world champion (we own no frisbees).

They now try to indipendently verify everything they hear.

My dad did this back in the '90s when things were harder to verify, and all it did was make adult me realize he can't be trusted to tell the truth about anything, as long as he decides it doesn't really matter. And rarely do we agree about what matters.

Just a word of caution about how what seems fun now, when kids are cute and gullible, might come back to bite you 20+ years later.

I thought my uncle was a dentist (he isnt, he does HVAC work) for 15 years because he lied to make me feel comfortable when he pulled a baby tooth of mine that was hanging on by a thread.

It didnt have any negative impacts on my life but small silly lies certainly could.

Nah, it's a game, training them for when its for real. Like how I sometimes pretend to forget the way home from the library and have my kids give me directions home while I'm driving.

This is how they learn to actually pay attention to where they are.

I'm 100% sure my dad believed then and would defend now that it was just a game.

Games aren't fun when you don't know someone's playing with you and you're trying to be serious.

YMMV, and I hope it does. I'm just providing the anecdote that I'm not in touch with my dad anymore, and dishonesty that at least looked a lot like what you're describing is a significant part of the reason.

You dont have to lie to them to train them in anything. I sincerely believe you have forgotten what it is like being a kid and how it feels when elders tell you something which isn't truth.

I remember being a kid. I don't lie to kids, not intentionally. They can be very easily mislead and lying feels so wrong for this reason alone.

I don't trust elders in family who lied or use to lie to me when I was a kid and I found out it was a lie at that time. That image of them lying has stayed.

To train them about finding way back home you can just ask them to lead you home. It will make them feel good that their parent is trusting them to take them home. Make it their responsibility. Go wherever your kids lead you to. It will be more fun than lying. Same can be done for almost anything else you think you should lie about to teach them.

It's not a game if you can't choose to stop playing it.

People just don't respect kids. Would you enjoy that game with other adults? Even if no matter the situation they wouldn't give a shit if you wanted to stop playing it or not?

Not being able to trust anyone ever to be acting in good faith and be honest is one of the reasons why we can't have nice things.

I don't respect my kids? You don't know shit.

Anyway, "other adults" lie all the time. Every employer I ever had has lied one time or another. This is important information. Bringing kids up into some fairies and unicorn fantasy where everything is unthinkingly accepted, thats disrespecting children

>Anyway, "other adults" lie all the time

Yes, and if this is their standard modus operandi the healthy thing to do, if possible, is getting rid of them from your life.

Are you gonna be happy when your kids start playing the game with you? When they are the ones unilaterally deciding what matters and what doesn't?

If the answer is "no" then you aren't respecting them as individuals capable of learning, thought and action. And I got the feeling you won't be happy when they do it with you.

When you constantly play games like that you are also establishing that you can never be trusted, even if they think it matters.

You don’t have to lie to your children to teach them how to think critically about the world. Nor do the actions of other adults necessarily make lying okay. You may even be doing your children a disservice by teaching them that lying is okay or humorous. I know, I know. I don’t know you at all.. but yes, what your saying does sound like it may be disrespectful to be honest.

As a counterpoint my dad did this, but would employ the same method and pile on if I seemed to believe it until eventually he'd tell me. However, I don't think he ever let me believe something that was untrue more than a few hours without correcting me.

Much better to play "2 truths, 1 lie" games as it is then explicit when there is a lie and when the kids can trust you.

You may enjoy the story “Best Teacher I Ever Had” by David Owen: https://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~tantc/cattywampus.html

Does Santa Claus serve this function at scale? Showing how humans can maintain a lie in collective, distributed fashion?

I wish more people would discover the power of this technique.

But ultimately, this is a fool's errand -- people who say they don't lie are almost always lying. Given how much of our brains have evolved to evince the hidden intentions of others, the result of this cat-and-mouse game requires lying to oneself first so as to more effectively convince others.

Just look at any conversation about "equality." Through their revealed preferences you can see that almost no one really believes in it but for their socioeconomic well-being they managed to convince themselves of it.

People will say "we moved for the schools" because they don't have the intellectual integrity and moral courage to say "we moved to avoid Africans and, to a lesser extent, Hispanics". The proliferation of BLM signage in these same areas is simply a testament to the arising false consciousness, as is the scorn they heap on the poorer members of their own cohort who cannot afford to avoid the Diversity Strenf they claim to cherish.

What an unfortunate way to go through life.

TLDR; how do you plan to not lie to your kids when you can't stop lying to yourself?

तू फेंक, में लपेट ता हूँ

underused comedy.

I believe lots of cross generational strife would be solved if parents would stop lying to their kids about Santa Claus.

I’d call Santa Claus mythology rather than a lie.

I was torn at first, but myths and stories are important to humans, and myths like Santa that are very old and pervasive may be playing an adaptive or instructive role.

Also, my three year old loves Santa. It makes xmas more magical for her. I also have many fond memories from childhood of this myth. It’s hard for me to see the harm.

I've shared that Santa was a real person who gave toys to poor people a long time ago. I'm mostly certain this is the truth.

But it backfired on me last Christmas when one of my children asked me point blank if Santa was real. I was in a hurry and just said "Yes, but he is dead" and then walked off.

Wait, so... Santa's ghost left the presents under our tree?!! :O

I think this word, "magical", is more a projection than anything. I remember Xmas well, and while there was a bit of wonder surrounding Santa, it was mostly excitement at seeing extended family and, of course, presents. Xmas is just as exciting without Santa.

Having said that I'm not going to be the parent who gets in shit bc his kid tells all the other kids he isn't real.

> I’d call Santa Claus mythology rather than a lie.

What's the difference between "mythology" and "lie" then?

A mythology is a story that expresses what the culture telling it wants to be true. It is an expression of values.

For example, our culture loves re-telling the story of Lord of the Rings. Why? We want it to be true that even in a world with much hardship and fallibility, we humans will honor our alliances and face horrors for the sake of each other. If we believe this and if we see that other people around us believe this then you know what happens? People feel more willing to make sacrifices for the sake of standing by their allies than they otherwise would be. Concretely, US representatives are more willing to approve of spending money to station troops in Poland. They worry less that they'll be voted out for how they are spending taxpayer money.

This highlights an interesting property of myths: The re-telling of them makes them more true.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Santa Claus does in fact exist as a role in society. My grandfather acted as him for many years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffUjwmXt9Go

I actually think there’s a good distinction. The narrative of a being who lives at the North Pole and employs (enslaves?) elves to make toys is mythology. The fact that your specific presents came from this guy is a lie.

Non-truths/falsehoods and lies aren’t the same thing, unless you’re in an Intro Philosophy logic class.

>Non-truths/falsehoods and lies aren’t the same thing

You're right, but the distinction in this case is far less clear than you make it out to be. The santa claus story has a social engineering component to it. Specifically, that an omniscient entity is monitoring your behavior and will give you gifts if you behave well. Given that, it's arguably a case of intentional deception (ie. lies). Absent christmas/santa claus being a cultural phenomena, telling your kids that they should behave well because there's an omniscient entity monitoring them, would be clearly a lie.

I think kids lack a clear distinction between imagination and the real world. They can believe something at one level and disbelieve at another without feeling the inconsistency. That can be a great skill to have that adults lose. But also makes the world more scary.

I think this is exactly backwards. Kids "believe in" Santa Claus in the same sense they believe in school and picnics - they listen for reindeer noises and hope to get a glimpse of him, and as far as they are concerned he exists in the same corporeal universe. It is only adults who possess the cognitive compartmentalization to "believe in" absurdities like the transubstantiation of wine into the blood of Christ, without it ever occurring to them to wonder what blood type it is, or whether it might be a useful source for transfusions.

Parenting is weird?? :)

> Also, my three year old loves Santa. It makes xmas more magical for her.

You just proved POV from previous comment. Lie/myth of Santa beheads some more lie/myth about religion. And I do not think this is the last item in the train of lie.

Lies and myths about religion also make people happy. It’s much easier to deal with the human condition if you are religious.

I was certainly happier when I could still hold that faith.

Some people are troubled for it because they hone in on sense of guilt, including for being unhappy. Or they think their unhappiness reflects a moral failure of some kind. Religion at the very least incentivizes reporting happiness. It can offer a sense of community as well which can otherwise be lacking.

For my part, none of the dogma did anything for me, but I felt as though it provides an imperative to be content with one's lot, i.e. if you know what's good for you, accept what may come, because x or y is in accordance with God's will etc. In contrast to eastern (or pseudo-eastern) thought which would short-hand to "accept what may come because that is the path to happiness".

I think some people need more comfort, and need to be told what to do and what will be in absolute terms, so religion can tickle the wires just right. Among the paths to peace of mind however, I also think it comes with the most potential consequences.

"For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief" (Ecclesiastes 1:18)

I understand your happiness, but for me it was absolutely disaster to reveal the god is an illusion, because many ideas I have thought in my head was (not became but was all the time) just a useless crap. That was literally my first discovery after I had got an access to Internets. "Thank you" my parents and society for pumping up my head with lies.

> but myths and stories are important to humans

says who?

You probably say that because you have seen religion playing a major role in people's lives.

Santa Claus isn't a lie, it's a fantasy. There's a brilliant line in Peppa Pig where they go to Grampy Rabbit's Dinosaur Park and one of the kids asks if a dinosaur egg is real. Grampy Rabbit booms (caps because Grampy Rabbit is played by Brian Blessed):

"NO, IT'S BETTER THAN REAL - IT'S PRETEND!"

Kids immerse themselves in fantasy. It's healthy, and they often don't care at all about the boundary between that and reality. There's a sharp distinction between telling children babies are delivered by storks because you're too repressed to answer their questions properly and taking part in the Santa Claus myth to bring some magic into the home at Christmas. You don't need to go and prick your kids' Christmas bubble in the name of "honesty".

My son is old enough to have figured it out for himself. My response is, and always will be, "you'll never get me say he's not real, and don't you go telling your sister that."

He understands perfectly (with a wink), and it's brought the exact opposite of cross-generational strife to our house.

If we actually did make a habit of lying to them I'm sure it would be a different story. We're very open and honest about real stuff (death, sex, money, etc - and where the boundaries of our own knowledge lie).

Fantasy is a category of lying, though. Artists tell lies that we voluntarily suspend our disbelief of in order to immerse ourselves in a world that doesn't exist, IMO to learn something about ourselves.

Santa Claus is a legend. Sometimes we "act out" these legends in a fake display to honor some distant past truth buried under millenia of broken telephone.

The moral of the story is, lying is OK, so long as you're honest about doing it.

As an author, I strongly disagree with the semantics here. Lie implies there is deception involved. The idea of a story being “true” conflates deception and history. (History being the full context of what has actually happened.)

1. All fantasy is not history.

2. All deception is not history.

It does not follow that all fantasy is deception.

Fantasy comes from imagination. For the audience who reads a story intending to be fictional and known to be by both author and audience, there is no deception.

That's just semantics, though, isn't it? My point is that there's a difference between the sort of thing Santa Claus is and the sort of thing storks delivering babies is, whatever terminology you use. I don't think we disagreed on that?

In 2017, there was a court case over the question of whether foster parents are obligated to tell children that the Easter Bunny is real. The Hamilton Children’s Aid Society argued that a belief in the Easter Bunny was an important part of Canadian culture, and removed children from their home over the refusal to lie.

The family was vindicated in court, several years later, but it really struck me how much trouble that caused. There are some people that really strongly believe in the importance of that fantasy.

https://www.jccf.ca/court_cases/derek-and-frances-baars-v-ha...

We made an explicit decision to not lie to our kids about Santa Claus or anything else. It was a good call.

We have told our child that a "Santa" is someone who gives without any expectations, sometimes secretly or anonymously. We empowered them to be a Santa if they want to be one.

That sounds like a great approach!

Mom? Are you planning a surprise party for me for my birthday?

I think telling my kids things for their enjoyment is ok. I don't believe me or my siblings were hurt by our parents given us the santa myth and I also feel it was an important life lesson to discover santa didn't exist.

> Mom? Are you planning a surprise party for me for my birthday?

How would you feel if you did have a suprise party? / No, but would you like me too? / No, but would that be ok for a future birthday?

What do you think I would tell you if you asked me that and I was planning a surprise party? Or if I wasn't?

You don't have to answer all their questions. Personally, I'd say, no, I don't like surprise parties, so I'm not going to plan one for someone, but for the sake of argument, I'll pretend I might.

You are not actually answering him, because you know that if you are planning a surprise party and you just answered yes, you would have ruined the party.

The truth is that not every lie is a problem.

“If I told you it wouldn’t be a surprise any more, would it?”

Also, think about how it adds to the work of the parents. Before your child, you probably never tried to lie as an adult and didn't need to remember your lies. All of a sudden, you've got a kid and now you start to lie to them and need to keep spinning these webs of lies to support previous lies. Must be exhausting.

It really isn't if you just treat it as a fun fantasy and don't work too hard to conceal the truth. Kids are happy to believe and have fun with it, and then when they're ready to know the truth, it's fairly obvious.

For example, don't try to come up with explanations for inconsistencies or impossibilities, but just ask the kid what they think. Eventually it'll be like, "Well, obviously Santa can't actually come to all the houses, so I think the other Santas help him." "I know you and Mom put our presents under our tree, but I think Santa gives them to you." Etc. They basically explicitly tell you how much Santa they want to believe at any given point.

Once they directly ask you if Santa is real, you can ask them if they really want you to answer. (The first time mine quickly said, "No, I know he's real!" and then dropped it for a year. :D ) But if they persist, you can tell them a nice version of the truth, like that the idea of Santa is definitely real, because why else would kids get presents from Santa every year. As they guessed, you help out by actually getting the presents and putting them under the tree, but it's because of this great spirit of giving that so many people feel around Christmas that we have this tradition.

> Before your child, you probably never tried to lie as an adult and didn't need to remember your lies.

Where are these adults who never tried to lie?

Perhaps a better word is "conspire"? As in to perpetuate a conspiracy. It requires much more planning and care than a one off lie.

I mean more like, you don't constantly lie to people. But yeah, like the commenter below says "conspire".

How do you keep your kid from telling all the other kids that Santa isn't real? Little kids can't keep secrets, let alone big ones!

Same way you keep your kid from telling all the other kids that god isn't real.

If you don't make a big deal about Santa, it won't be a big deal to them, and when they ask about him, you can say 'some people believe Santa is a nice guy that's totally not creepy and somehow delivers presents to all the children' or whatever. And you may likely have already had similar conversations about religion and how it's respectful to let people believe what they want about things like that.

Of course, if you push Santa hard, and they're a fact oriented kid, when they find out the facts, it's going to be a big deal, and they're going to want to tell their friends about it. You won't know if they're fact oriented before you decide to push Santa though.

We told them that some other parents were telling their kids this Santa Claus story, and that while we didn't want to do that, it wasn't meant in a bad way, and so please don't spoil things for the other children.

They may yell the truth about Santa but many kids will prefer to believe their parents and other adults.

How do you keep your kid from yelling "fire!" when there isn't one?

Not my kids, not my problem.

How do you know it was a good call?

Yea, I'd be pissed if my parents never did Santa, because frankly it was a very fond time in my childhood and once you learn Santa isn't real you never get that time back.

So we do Santa with our son and daughter and there was never a discussion not to do it.

Some parents tend to see children as mini-adults. Myths and legends may sound silly to us, but they are important for children's development.

Because we have an excellent relationship with our children, and they never expressed any regret for us having done that. You think children like discovering they've been lied to?

Yes. We’ve never lied to our kids about Santa Claus. Though we don’t preach against St Nick. The kids naturally learn about it from the surrounding culture. Invariably they all ask, “Is Santa real?” We say, “what do you think?” They always respond, “I don’t think so.” We tell them that they are right, but other kids are lied to by their parents so they shouldn’t go around telling other kids that Santa isn’t real.

Not sure if I'd tell a kid "other kids are lied to by their parents" because the other parents wouldn't see a cultural myth as "lies", under the "cold, hard lies" and "you are a liar" definition.

And you know kids... "My mom said your mom is A LIAR"

My parents told me Santa Claus was mythology and that parents played along because it was fun and magical for their kids. They also told me about the symbolic meaning of giving gifts.

It made the whole thing amazing for me. I always knew where gifts from Santa came from, but we could all have fun pretending.

Also, consequences for ruining the magic would be equally mythological. ;)

I don’t understand this, but some people seem to feel very strongly about it.

I didn’t think anything about finding out that Santa wasn’t real, but it seems to make a VERY strong impression on some people. The contrast is interesting.

One thing to consider is: If the child realizes that Santa Claus isn't real before being told by their parents, they will experience the feeling of months or possibly years of all of the adults they trust lying to them. That is not a good feeling to have.

I wasn't told by my parents. I found out because I looked under their bed and saw all the presents. I didn't bother me in the least nor did I start thinking all adults were lying. At most I thought they were pretending to provide fun. When my friends pretend to be someone else they aren't lying.

My dad used to have Santa visit (a friend of his who volunteered in public and came by as a favor to my dad). I didn't notice who it was. It didn't bother me at all when 2-3 years later I figured it out.

I know of zero kids that were traumatized by this. Not saying there are none but not going to recommend people don't do it. If we stopped doing things because some kid somewhere in the world freaked out we'd do absolutely nothing.

I figured it out on my own, didn’t feel that way. I assume most kids suspect / figure it out rather than have their parents tell them.

The phenomenon is interesting but I can’t say I understand it either.

I think it depends on how actively parents try to maintain the fantasy. IE how directly they lie. When the kid is ready to know, they'll ask directly. If the parents straight-up lie at that point, then yeah, you can start to have a problem. But you can say, "Well, what do you think?" If they're satisfied with that, they're not ready. But if they say, "I think it's you guys" or whatever, you can ask if they really want to know. And if so, then you tell them the truth (in a nice way), and it'll probably be fine.

On the other hand, it can also be bad if the parent decides it's time for the child to know and tells them before they're ready. (That was what I got from a well-meaning but misguided parent, and it certainly wasn't fun.) Really it's like most 'adult' topics: you can broach the topic and then let the kid show you what level of detail they're ready for with the questions they ask.

This assumes a normative value of truth being good. You could be ambivalent on the truthfulness of adults, accepting early on that everyone lies some fraction of the time and it's ok for you to do it too. The badness of lying is a societal rather than universal value. Kids lie all the time when they think it will work, so why would they be surprised or offended when it happens?

The real hat trick is to lie to the adults about still believing in Santa so the presents keep on coming. A con so deep the marks think they're the ones pulling the con.

Our plan is to keep it going up until the point our daughter asks us directly, at which point we’ll tell her the truth.

Arguably part of the reason TO put on the production IMO- kids get a firsthand lesson with low stakes about platos cave

Strong impression - like they are angry or embarrassed that they were deceived? I can't think of anyone I knew as a child who felt this way.

It's only lying if you ever admit it.

It's a good exercise in critical thinking. Our teenager keeps on trying to get us to say Santa isn't real. Not going to happen.

I'm reasonably sure that's not how lying works.

That sounds really close to gaslighting.

Is it time to link to Greg Lake's "I Believe in Father Christmas"?

    I believed in Father Christmas
    I looked to the sky with excited eyes
    then I woke with a yawn in the first light of dawn
    and I saw him
    and through his disguise

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfY4b1NszpY

(My take, though, is that Santa Claus is small potatoes compared to the song's larger themes of disillusionment that come with growing up.)

I think we need to understand that Greg Lake was a bit of an entitled whiner, though. The Kinks are more on point with “Father Christmas.”

It helped my kid discover the scientific method on his own, as he would weight the clues (carrots bitten off and some beer drunk overnight) vs obviously not handmade presents.

I don’t think he actually believed it — I think the kids books are pretty clear on this topic.

Discovering the lie about Santa Claus was one of the first experiences that taught me not to take my parents' words at face value. So it's probably not something that parents would like, but in fact it's a valuable lesson for a child.

Inspired by pg essay “Lies We Tell Kids” we haven’t lied to ours yet (ages 5 and 7). It’s worked out well so far and I think we are building a good foundation of trust for later years.

I don't recall lying to mine either (7 and 10). I'm not dogmatic about it, so I expect I have on occasion, but I certainly don't make a habit of it, and I cringe at the kind of casual lying I hear a lot of parents doing. That said, some information is definitely too heavy for young children, so I will demur or omit details when I feel it's necessary.

She named her kids Pippa and Maisy.

She mentioned this.

She mentioned it again.

They seem like common enough names, what's the issue?

Those are not common names in the U.S. at least.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/well/move/leadville-katie...

Here’s at least one person with kids that have exactly those names in the US.

Edit: just noticed the author is the same, haha

Are you joking? That’s the same person as in the original article. One person in the entire US having kids with those names doesn’t make them common.

The author (Katie Arnold) is British. Both names are very normal girl's names in the UK.

they may not be their real names to protect their identity

How do you truthfully answer questions of a 5 or 6 year old about procreation, childbirth and marriage without talking about sex, genetalia and pleasure. And is it a good idea to talk about them to a 6 year old?

If they're curious, yes I've told my young kids about procreation. You don't have to be explicit, and they stopped me when they stopped being curious.

I told them that sometimes a man will give a seed to the woman and that seed grows inside an egg in her body. It then grows until it's ready to come out, and that's the baby's birthday.

Super simplified (and perhaps sheltered), but not lying.

Marriage is even easier. Sometimes two people love each other and make a commitment to be together even when things are difficult. But sometimes they become too difficult and one or both of them decides they don't want to be married any more.

But yes, I do think it's good to indulge a child's curiosity.

Everyone has to tailor to their own values, but I think these are good, clear descriptions.

How does the man give the seed and can I see the seed?

We used a book when the questions got more detailed:

https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Funny-Word-Bodies-Feelings/dp/160...

Google Image search works too to show illustrations or medical drawings of sex organs.

> But yes, I do think it's good to indulge a child's curiosity.

My mother indulging my curiosity is precisely why I am who I am today. She's told me that my most frequent word was why. That voracious thirst for knowledge and understanding shaped me into the scientist that I am, and we certainly need more scientists if we are to solve the pressing issues of our society.

If a 5 or 6 year old actually asks a question that needs answers about sex, then why not?

But keep in mind that it’s easy for adults to project their adult experiences into children. When a kid asks how babies are made, they are very unlikely to be asking about intercourse or romance or eroticism or pleasure or any such thing, nor are they even likely to be particularly interested in those topics. They are probably asking for something about how a sperm and an egg combine to make an embryo and how that embryo grows up into a baby inside of a mommy. They might be interested in how the baby gets out. They might be interested in how the sperm and egg combine, and, depending on their age, they might be fascinated by genetics. Maybe they’re interested in how some animals fertilize eggs inside of mommies and how some other animals fertilize eggs after they’ve been laid. Some kids will be interested to learn that plants do this too. (But mosses are quite different, as are creatures like aphids and even oranges!).

And yes, kids should know how sex works, how consent works, and how sex results in babies before they figure it out by accident. But that’s unlikely to be anything that a 5 or 6 year old asks.

(5 year olds are very likely to need to be aware of consent in non-sexual contexts, though.)

Even that assumes a fair bit of background knowledge. At that age it would be perfectly logical to suppose that "making a baby" means assembling all the parts together like Ikea furniture.

When our daughter was 3 or so, she would ask why she wasn't in our wedding pictures. "You weren't born yet" would trigger an incredible meltdown as she confronted the idea of having not been alive. Inconsolable. This kept happening. Eventually we just explained as much as it took to get her to settle down. She seemed content with the idea that the ovum that became her was in her mother at that time. At some point she hilariously distorted this into "I was just a head".

Sometimes it's terrifying for them when they don't know the truth.

We have a photo book from just about every family vacation. Our youngest loves looking at them, but is incensed that we went on all these trips before she was born. “Why didn’t you wait till I was here!?” she often asks indignantly. We’ve had to redo so many older family vacations so that she can have a photo book with pictures of the family, including her, in those same places.

This has nothing to do with sex or being born, it is the normal age where children learn they aren’t the center of the universe. That is what is stressful for them… the idea of independence is scary.

There are other childhood development phases such as edge detection physics that make parents bonkers. How many times do we have to pick up spoons from the floor before they just understand that stuff always crashes to the floor when knocked off a high chair?

Same with ours, at the same age. “When you were an egg” was a very satisfactory explanation, and true in most cases. And then “when mummy and daddy were eggs”, which at least lays the conceptual groundwork.

Any kid who grew up on a farm knew this.

It’s a recent societal invention to think this is all something to be hidden until the 365th day of the 17th year of life.

I have questions about when sex became taboo for children to learn about. Look at historical dwellings and family sizes and try to imagine how they kept kids from figuring it out from firsthand observation.

Probably with the advent of industrial infantilization of children. In a world where many children were married by 16 and before that lived in a farm and assisted with birth (both human and animal) it would be hard to keep it a mystery.

16? Must be a spinster.

This longstanding claim that age-of-marriage was historically that low is silly.

Typical pattern in Western Europe was women married at 19-22 in the 1500s. You can find outliers like Tuscany in the 1400s where it looks like that number is 17-21.

Typical ancient Roman marriage patterns were for women to wed at 20-25, it seems.

There's outliers, of course. Especially with elites: where political and other concerns often created pressures for early marriage.

Looking at the outliers in today's world, you can find e.g. in Sub-Saharan Africa about 35-40% of women wedding before age 18. So there's really only tiny pockets of the world in space and time where it seems that the average marriage would be under age 18.

Perhaps this came from the age of consent rather than the age of marriage. I just did a quick search and found that for women the age of consent in the USA in the 1800s was typically down to 10 years old, except for Delaware where it was 7 (yes! 7!) years old.

There's two facets of sexual behaviour that are unique to humans. The first is we're the only species that sometimes gets aroused on violence or gets violent on arousal. This is an accident of neurology, both feelings a processed close by. The second is we're the only species that cares if anyone's watching. This observation seems to hold across cultures and time periods.

So the answer is, it was always taboo for kids or anyone else to watch. People may not have always been able to hide it effectively, but they were always at least trying.

> The first is we're the only species that sometimes gets aroused on violence or gets violent on arousal.

Not sure why you think this. Plenty of other animals become violent during marrying seasons, it's often an explicit part of their sexual behavior, at least for males. For example, most horned mammals (deer, buffalos) have violent conquests in the mating season.

I learned it from the Stanford Neuroscience lectures available on YouTube. The ones with Dr. Spolansky. I'm not sure how to discern the subtle difference between "a brain liable to conflate sex and violence" with "violent behaviors tangentially related to sex" either. I'm just trusting the scientist telling me the difference is there and they've studied it.

My parents are both doctors. When I was a child they bought some VHS tapes (that was the 90s) cartoons documentaries for children about the human body covering also the reproductive system.

When my partner was pregnant we told explicitly to our 2yo daughter that there was a baby in mom's belly. When the baby was born we told her we went to the hospital and the baby came out of mom's zezette/vagina (zezette is the french word for kids to call vaginas).

I understand that the sex part and human psychology might be harder to explain but you can definitely explain the mechanical part. Sex have a lot of taboos and emotions attached to it but you can describe it to a child without those parts taking a medical/anatomic perspective.

As they say in the Scrubs tv show: "Maybe the dirty little secret about sex is that it isn't so dirty after all"

There isn't a recipe for this. Use common sense and empathy.

When a 6 year old asks you about sex there are limits and a context to their curiosity. Usually there's some particular unresolved question in their mind that can be answered truthfully without going into things they're not ready for. You need to understand their mental state.

You don't need to pull down an anatomical chart and start talking about sperm. You don't need to clam up and lie or give them the impression the whole thing is an inimaginable eldritch nightmare. You just need to answer the question.

(Source: Bringing up kids, since these are the only sorts of questions parents have some special insight into.)

we were listening to radio (with 4 and 6yo) and host mentioned something about prostitutes (regarding TV show)

so my kid ask me what is prostitute?

someone who does sex for money

obvious question followed, what is the sex?

it's exercise done by adults in bed when they wanna have baby or sometimes even when they don't want because they just like the exercise

kids lost interest after that, now tell me, did I lie? by all accounts sex is pretty good calorie burning exercise

btw. I told them already like year before that how is baby done, that penis goes inside vagina, then sperms go from penis to egg inside and there will grow baby, didn't even bother with some bees and other crap, but dunno how much kids remembered because they were not interested about it. we also watched already around that time amazing (dubbed) TV show Il était une fois... la vie (Once Upon a Time... Life) though I think it's more suitable for old children, I liked it when I was in primary school

we still though tell christmas gifts are brought by santa claus/baby jesus

I feel that was a very good answer.

I was 6 years old when my mom explained where my new sister is coming from. She talked about genitalia, ovaries, sex, uteruses, fallopian tubes, menstruation, and all the rest.

I remember really appreciating it and keeping track of my sister’s current size on a piece of paper from 1 cell onward.

A true answer doesn’t have to be a complete answer.

Even now many of the ways we teach science are not complete - they’re true but not the whole story. Is Newtonian physics untrue or incomplete?

When you intentionally withhold the inconvenient/difficult part of it that you know to be true, it is untrue.

Not if you’re open about withholding it. That”s the approach we’ve taken.

>And is it a good idea to talk about them to a 6 year old?

Why would it be a bad idea?

Maybe it's not their kid!

My mom told me what sex was and answered whatever I asked completely frankly since as early as I can remember. I turned out fine.

You might find the below resources helpful for these conversations. Appropriate ages for each are listed mid page on each product listing.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1609804856

https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Funny-Word-Bodies-Feelings/dp/160...

https://www.amazon.com/Its-Not-Stork-Families-Friends/dp/076...

I think the admonition is that you should tell the truth/be honest when you choose to speak on a subject. However your children don't have the right to demand that you speak on every possible subject at their convenience.

What's your concern?

How do you tell a 5 or 6yo why mommy/daddy left? Almost anything you say there outside of death is a lie.

If they’re old enough to ask that question, they’re old enough to know a honest answer.

“You remember how Mommy used to be in so much pain? That was her (name of sickness). It can no longer hurt her, and the pain is finally over for her. The sad part is that Mommy’s body lost the struggle with (name of sickness). That’s why she is no longer with us now.“

“So, is Mommy dead?”

“Yes, my dear. The (name of sickness) was just too strong in the end. The doctors worked so hard and did everything they could. In the end, even they weren’t able to help Mommy. We’re going to be very sad for a long time and that’s going to be tough for us. But you’re not alone, we’re going to get help wherever we can, and we’ll be pulling through that sad time together.”

Experts recommend broaching such topics as young as possible.

Recently such a case was discussed in a question/answer column in a Dutch national newspaper where two experts answer such dilemmas. “When do you tell a child that their father isn't their biological parent?” was that week's question, and the answer was a unanimous “As soon as possible”. Don't hide it, don't make a big deal out of it; just explain it in terms a child can understand. Keep it hidden, and the moment they learn the truth (which inevitably won't be through their parents) you will have to deal with very strong feelings of betrayal and rejection that could have been avoided.

It seems that the younger children are, the more readily they can just accept such facts. Keeping secrets will inevitably backfire and cause trust issues.

I wasn't talking about death as a reason for leaving. I was talking about all other reasons.

Mommy and daddy failed to agree on such fundamental aspects of living together that they couldn't, anymore.

I don’t see the issue with this? Why would you not want to talk about sex, genitalia or pleasure? I mean, I’d keep it circumspect, wouldn’t want him trying it at school, but the basic concepts are fine I think.

He’s now 3 and he’s definitely discovered playing with his peepee is fun.

“I will answer that when you are older.”

The worst answer possible. So not funny to reveal some unspoken secrets (or consider them unrevealable) after the parent has died.

Yep it is better when they find themselves find out from some degenerate hardcore pornography.

when my son was 6 I explained about Santa, two days later he came home and told me I was full of shit, he'd seen Santa at the mall .... this was wonderful, he was thinking for himself, believing his own eyes over what others in authority were telling him .... I felt like I'd won (in small way) at parenting

We should deprecate telling fairy tales to children, as most are lies anyway.

I agree with telling kids the truth about factual information and being honest, absolutely, but no, fairytales for me are crucial cultural heritage. They also have numerous practical social bonding functions. It's the same with little tricks and practical jokes.

Kids need to understand the difference between fantasy and reality. They also need to learn how to evaluate information, interrogate a problem and how to come to their own conclusions. Figuring out that there isn't a Santa Clause is a seminal experience for kids that IMHO they need to come to themselves, or at least that they benefit from doing so independently.

I was discussing this with my daughters just a few days ago. One day when she was about 5 my eldest said she would like some fairy dust from the tooth fairy instead of money in return for her latest tooth. I told her to write a letter to the fairy and leave it with the tooth under her pillow. I then took a sherbet sweet, ground it up into fine powder, peeled some toilet paper into a single layer, cut it into a small square and bound up the sherbet into a tiny bundle using a thread. It was about 5 millimetres across. The look on her face when she found it was priceless.

She's now 18 and we talked about it. Things like that are important bonding experiences, it's part of the fun of growing up, developing a sense of humour, and absolutely not at all the same sort of thing as lying or real deception.

In the examples int eh article the parents were untruthful in order to coerce compliance, or to make their lives easier. The were being deceitful in a selfish way and the kids were rightly outraged. That's completely different from a shared story or fantasy, and I think that kids that don't learn that difference and appreciate it are missing out on something really important and valuable.

Is it not highly important to tell stories and fairy tales to children? Of course, you should not act like they are true, but there are often lessons that can be learned from tales. Being able to observe different levels of trueness in any story is an important skill to have I think. People like to tell in fairy tale form about their own lives often, so you should not be misled by believing everything, but observe the levels of trueness - (small) lies, omissions, facts - and evaluate what the story means to you. Telling fairy tales and stories to your children and then reflecting with them on the story could improve that skill a lot.

I agree and I try. We did not introduced Santa Claus to our daughter. Yet at the kindergarten they did all the christmassy things and she came back home speaking of Santa Claus. Sometimes it's harder when the lies are considered white lies across the people surrounding you.

Stories are fine (and good!) so long as you're not pretending they're literally true.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=VwZ6S6DkDoc

How can you bribe your children for not crying? If you do hard shit sometimes you cry. That takes absolutely nothing away from it. As an ultra runner she should know. I don’t care if my children cry on hikes. I am certainly sympathetic to their plight but if it’s how the currently feel who am I to judge. If they just whine I just have to accept that too.

The first world problems of healthy people with healthy kids with plenty of time and money for leisure.

If you are traveling and stay for the night at an old lady’s home, and she cooks dinner for you as if you were his grandson but the dinner is awful. Do you tell her the cold truth that it’s awful? Is truthfulness always desirable at all costs?

this article is about kids, not old ladies.

If your kid draws a picture for you, do you tell them it's terrible?

That's not honesty, that's just being an asshole.

If a kid draws a picture and has obviously put some effort into it and is proud of it, I'm gonna be impressed and tell them so. If they obviously haven't tried very hard and I'm being called upon to judge it, i'd say it didn't look like they tried very hard. And kids usually respond well to that sort of criticism. But for kid's art to be objectively terrible, I don't even know what that could mean.

Fortunately, the Grand Canyon is spectacularly impressive, every time you see it. Downplaying it the 'first' time was not any great mistake as their mother feared. It didn't matter. They will see it again for the 'first' time again and again in their lifetimes.

As she wisely pointed out at the end of the article, the kids don't need you to interpret awesome.

How about “never think that it’s as easy as never/always doing something”. Lying to your kids, or indeed joking, has its places.

All the world religions are against lying. As an atheist, Sam Harris looked into why no lying is allowed with virtually no exceptions. https://www.samharris.org/books/lying

Tremendously good book and I bet he could expand upon it further. So never lying is already the standard. What makes it so important for kids?

>As a parent, though, I’ve discovered that there’s a fine line between omission and deception.

Not a spectrum, this is a binary evaluation.

>They can’t manage their own expectations and output if you’re always narrating the story for them. Sooner or later, you have to get out of their way.

It's more important.

Imagine a world where a child lives with a single parent who compulsively lies. Even these people won't lie 100% of the time but the child would have a world view of inverse of their parents. The child will know and understand they are regularly being lied to and then they start questioning everything. There are so many lies that they even question the truths they were given.

They are then on their own through adolescence and tremendously confused about the world. Their lack of guidance is than damaging to their morality structure. Near late adolescence is when it will break. They will realize that they are on their own and have missed a key stage of development. They will then need to self-construct their own. They will not allow social norms to be this construction. In some cases this will be good for society. Someone comes along and discovers a social norm that is wrong and that's how it changes.

This is something that may always be with society. I believe this is something that does have to be proactively addressed in schools where parents fail to 100% of the time tell the truth.

So... tell them evolution is true but thankfully it stopped at the neck?

On the big questions I think it's right to be honest (definitely don't lie), but there's also a need to tailor what you say and how you say it to the state of mind of the child asking it. Where there's a question you need to understand it before you can answer it. That's true for all teaching, of course.

I haven't always been successful at that with my own children, but one time I think I did get it right was talking to my first child about death at age 5. We'd looked at an insect larva under a microscope and it stopped moving, so we talked about how bodies can break permanently. He wasn't squeamish or upset when he asked, in relation to this happening to people, "what happens to you when you die?"

I had already explained that (in my view - I've always made it clear there are others) the "you" that is thinking ceases to exist. The question arose because he was struggling with the concept of himself not existing, which isn't an easy one. So we talked a bit about the time before he was born. He had no memory of it as he didn't exist then, but the world did and things were happening nonetheless. That satisfied him for the time being.

Later he asked about the larva and pointed out that it was still there, just not moving. I explained that its body was still there but it was no longer in the right shape to be that particular bug, and it never would be again. I illustrated that by arranging some objects in a circle on the table and saying "there's a circle on the table now, isn't there?" And then rearranging the objects randomly and saying "now the circle is gone, but the things the circle was made of are still there."

Again, that satisfied him and in the years since he appears to have developed a healthy attitude to death. It's probably helped that I've always pointed out that (again, the way I see it) the business with the objects and the circle is profoundly mysterious. We can play around with things on a table and make it seem banal because it is an everyday reality, but we don't have a satisfying answer to "what that circle was" as distinct from the objects that made it up. We have a lot of knowledge that can help illuminate the question and we might (or might not) be making some progress on actually answering it, but we certainly don't have all the answers and it's an open question whether we ever will.

The matter-of-factness of the world doesn't mean it's obvious, understood or even necessarily understandable, or that things like people, thoughts, life and emotions aren't first class aspects of it.

Sorry, that derailed into pseudophilosophical rambling. Point is it's important to try and understand where their questions are coming from.

Who told their kids that Santa isn't real?

I did.

Firstly, in general I made a slightly different choice from the author of the FA in that from an early age I would actively and very obviously lie to my child sometimes. I wanted them to be able to tell when someone was lieing and know that people lie all the time and you need to not just trust people but check things and think for yourself. I started with very exaggerated and obvious lies and moved on to more subtle things. I made it pretty obvious it was a game. Think of Calvin's dad explaning science in "Calvin and Hobbes".

Seperately I think it's really important to be serious and honest to your child when they ask you serious and honest questions. So for example, they came to me one day and said "Tell me the truth, does Santa Claus exist?" and I said "Do you really want me to tell you?" and they said "yes". So I told the truth.

You need to be really straightforward with children from a really young age including about topics you think they may not understand yet. For example I've seen in some of the sibling comments people talking about difficulties introducing children to topics around sex etc. I _guarantee_ if you take your child to a farm or zoo or even just a walk in the park and see dogs "playing" these topics will come up. You have to pick an angle that works for you but be straightforward.

Interesting, do you have an example of a lie that you told them that you thought would be obvious?

Sure.

   Me: I'm off to go slay some dragons. 
   Them: you don't slay dragons
   Me: what do I do?
   Them: you code computers to catch bad guys... Black marketers or something.

This was age 7 or so. At the time I worked on algorithms to detect rogue traders in financial markets.

Bravo, Sean!

My mom and stepdad always told my sister that Santa is not real but that we pretend he is as a fun tradition. She was fine, and this didn’t seem to hamper her enjoyment of Christmas at all. I plan to do the same with my kids, if I ever have any.

Last year I humorously told my 7yo kid that Santa Claus died of COVID. Already before COVID though, we had the Christmas tradition of watching Futurama's "Xmas Story" episode, pretending that Santa has been replaced by a murderous robot who kills people during Christmas day.

It's all a matter of perspective. In our case, we've replaced mythology with humor and subversion - I prefer the latter to the former, and the kid fully embraced it (making the Futurama episode our tradition is their idea) :)

I am constantly amazed at parents that have so little respect and regard for their children that they will lie over such trivial things.

The author wasn’t lying about sex, or about death, or about other difficult or unpleasant truths we all have to discover and work through as we grow up. She was lying about the most trivial things, for the sole purpose of manipulating her children into behaving the way she wanted them to. Kind of sickening when you think about it.

It’s really the most cowardly way to parent. Good parents set clear boundaries and expectations for behavior. They then set consequences for violating them and enforce those consequences consistently and clearly. They communicate with their child and ensure they connect the consequence with the behavior.

Instead of “we can’t go to Disney Land because it’s closed indefinitely,” she should have said, “we can’t go to Disney Land because [the honest to god truth].” You then tell them if they keep asking or whining, there will be a consequence, and when they continue to whine, you enforce the consequence. If you do this consistently over time, it’s amazing how quickly they get the picture.

The problem for this woman and her husband is that the truth is “we’re not going to Disney Land because your father and I are selfish pricks, and we want to go rafting instead.” They obviously have the money and vacation time to do either and they’ll happily drag their kids to any outdoor adventure they want to go on, but Disney Land? That sounds lame, we’re not doing that.

The beautiful thing about making it a priority to tell the truth is that you have to confront selfish motives like this. It is so much easier to lie than to tell the truth because telling the truth in these circumstances will reveal something unpleasant, something that you don’t want to deal with, or something that would make you look bad if other people knew the truth. Living in the truth makes you a better person.

I’m glad she discovered it’s a completely toxic way to parent your children. Unfortunately, she’s been doing this to her kids for the past decade, and I would not be surprised if her two daughters have already internalized lying as a means to get what you want. After all, they learned from the best.

Each lie you tell incurs a debt to the truth. Eventually, that debt must be paid. When kids, or adults for that matter, find out they’ve been lied to, they start to doubt even the truthful things they’ve been told. At that point, how can you trust anything that person has said? On top of that, they feel abused and disrespected when lied to. Why didn’t they tell me the truth? Do they think I’m really that gullible? Do they not think I’m worthy to hear the truth? That bond of trust takes far more effort to repair than it does to break. Chances are it will never be restored fully.

The danger isn’t that her daughters believe the lies. Indeed, that was the whole point of her manipulative behavior. It’s that her daughters never develop the ability to recognize the truth. This woman’s kids are about to discover they’ve been lied to about a ton of stuff if they don’t already know it. Do they even know what the truth looks like? What a truth-teller sounds like? They’ve been gaslit their whole lives. Moms like this woman are a big part of the reason we’re in the predicament we’re in as a society. Her daughters are going to grow up and won’t even recognize the truth, or even care about the truth, because they’ve been lied to so frequently in their formative years.

It's easy to lament the distortions and misinformation and lies being peddled in all corners of our society. But it’s going to take a generation of parents to step it up and stop with this bullshit and love their kids enough to tell them the honest to god truth about things. As other commenters have said, you don’t have to tell them all the little details, but you do need to respect them enough to address their questions or behavior head on, without resorting to lying and manipulation.

> She was lying about the most trivial things, for the sole purpose of manipulating her children into behaving the way she wanted them

As a children, you depend on your parents for food, shelter, physical and psychological safety... everything.

Children sooner or later realize that they are being manipulated by the very same people that they should trust most.

Unsurprisingly, it's quite traumatic and the trust is difficult to win back.

Do you have children?

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