This does not make sense. These are not lies, but simplifications. The only lie seems to be the title itself.
I would have expected Santa Claus, storks delivering babies, and perhaps even God, to show up under this heading. Count me disappointed.
I would have expected Santa Claus, storks delivering babies, and perhaps even God, to show up under this heading. Count me disappointed.
But, not having looked at all of them, some of them can also be what were historically our closest understandings of the way things actually worked. In which case I'm not sure it is even a lie through simplification rather than just teaching children the evolution of our own understanding.
As a matter of fact, I'm a big proponent of "abstraction-based" model of parenting/education - one presents to children complex/multi-layered topics, and children will absorb the layer they're able to understand, and ignore the deeper layers. sexuality is the one of the most obvious topics.
This approach is not entirely obvious, as some will typically say "children won't be able to understand the topic"; the problem with this argument is that complex/multi-layered topics are not all-or-nothing.
In the case of the colors, I'd argue that an abstraction of the colour palette would be "three colors and their mixes" rather than "grayscale".
I hated school precisely because there was no mystery. Everything was known. It wasn’t till later that I found out many of the models taught on the blackboard were lies.
Even most of history class; Columbus should have died on his voyage, because it was known at the time that his calculations for the size of the Earth was wrong, but this is rarely mentioned. Same for the lie that the other types of protohumans died out because "they were worse at using tools" rather than because we brutally murdered them. The latter is a nice example of an uncomfortable idea that we deliberately lie to kids about so that they don’t have to know.
Of course its a simplification. You are talking to a kid! Not a graduate with high-school physics.
How else will you even attempt to simplify it to 10 years old?
It seems that you are also blaming a school teacher for not being a domain expert with PhD and up to date knowledge.
Most of teachers with decade or more are just that - teachers. Its their 9-5 job.
> The electron cloud model says that we cannot know exactly where an electron is at any given time, but the electrons are more likely to be in specific areas.
How is that a simplification? and do you really think their eyes would not glaze over as they start daydreaming about icecream as you talk.
Er, at least by the standards being thrown around in this thread it absolutely can be and regularly is. You can't have less than zero of something, it only makes sense to take the root of a positive number, any time we avoid generalizing the area under a curve or rates of change because calculus won't come up for a few years...
How old are yours kids?
I also add I have never seen the real Santa because he is insanely fast to go to all locations of the world.
I suggest it is better not to lie - why bring deceit into that relationship? - but keep the idea of Santa, if you like.
First he was sad - he liked the world of Santa, little gnomes hiding sweets for him in the woods when we were out hiking, things like that. But my clear answers just confirmed the suspicions he already brought home from school.
Then we talked about how this was a nice game adults and older kids play for the younger ones - and he got that immediately, kids inherently understand (and like) role playing games. So now he's in the role of those who know and play the game for the younger kids in our broader family - and he's proud of it :)
Before that happened, I actually was afraid and unsure about how to get out of this storyline without breaching trust. But it all played out smoothly.
But think about it - you set him up for a fall. You lied, then he spotted it and you told him the truth. This is a loss of trust - the child now knows that his parents lie to him. (Great that you admit it, after, of course.)
Perhaps the lying is to some extent useful - such is the nature of this world and all that - but that whole charade could have been avoided without any deceit in the first place.
But I really don't see how you can argue that its ok to lie 'in the right way' to naive, trusting children, for the sake of some cultural convention.
And I'm not even broaching the pros (?) and cons of the cultural convention.... I'm sure no one wants to hear my thoughts on the 'most wonderful time of the year', lol.
> your kids will know that there are things you will lie to them about
And that's part of growing up. I now know that the dog I barely remember (when I was almost 3 years old) didn't "went with his mom that came to pick him up one day", and understanding why they lied is part of growing up. Instead of triggering a loss of trust now I can say "I see what you did there, now I understand".
Its a different thing to go along with the social convention of tricking the younger generation, and allowing these external conventions to cleave the trust between a parent and child.