disorder â a sign of delinquency. In our everyday lives we still think in similar terms, and few parents are comfortable with the notion that their child is a liar. But if you notice your three-year-old telling lies, you neednât be unduly concerned. In fact, it may be that parents should celebrate a childâs first lie, just as they celebrate their childâs first words.
Learning to Lie
We exert our powers of deception virtually from birth: even babies seem to engage in pre-verbal forms of fakery. During her research with the parents of very young children, Vasudevi Reddy of the University of Portsmouth found examples of baby behaviour that fit the taxonomy of deception in non-human primates put together by Byrne and Whiten: Teasing, Pretending, Concealing and Distracting. A baby girl repeatedly puts her hands out as if to join her welcoming mother but then backs away, laughing. A nine-month-old appears to fake laughter as a way of signalling that he wants to join in with others who are laughing. An eleven-month-old baby, being made to eat, watches her mother carefully, and as soon as her back is turned throws the toast away. The simplest acts of deception, says Reddy, âseem to happen more or less simultaneously with the earliest attempts to communicate anything at allâ.
Not only that, but children start telling lies more or less at the point they learn language. Between two and four these lies are usually self-serving and very simple, told to avoid punishment or to hide a minor transgression, as in the case of Darwinâs son. Very young children tend not to be very good at lying. A three-year-old might say âI didnât hit herâ right after his father has witnessed him smacking his sister. A parent who enters the kitchen to find his daughter standing on a chair and reaching for the shelf where the chocolate is kept might find that she denies everything â but when he asks her why sheâs standing on a chair, sheâll say âI needed to reach . . .â The psychologist Josef Perner remembers his son Jacob trying to avoid going to bed by using an excuse heâd successfully adopted on past occasions â âIâm so tiredâ â without realising that in this context he wasnât doing his case any favours. Very young childrenâs lies are designed to achieve simple, defensive goals, and are quickly confessed to. The lying of a three-year-old is instinctive and spontaneous; thereâs little method to it.
Then, at around the age of four, something changes.
In a survey carried out by a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, parents and teachers were asked at what age they thought children were able to tell a considered lie â the kind where the child knows exactly what he or she is doing. The answers varied. Some mothers thought that children aged as old as five-and-a-half were incapable of such dishonesty (nobody disagreed that kids are lying by the time they reach six). Generally speaking, however, parents reported that their children started to lie more and lie better around their fourth birthday. What parents notice intuitively, psychologists have identified methodically in study after study: somewhere between the ages of three and a half and four and a half, children learn how to lie with much greater skill and enthusiasm. On being caught reaching for the chocolate, that same child might claim that she is standing on the chair to return the cereal box to its rightful place. She will also maintain her story when challenged. And sheâll do it all with a straight face.
Victoria Talwar has spent much of her professional life watching young children tell lies. An assistant professor of child psychology at McGill University in Montreal, she is interested in when and how children develop a sense of right and wrong, and specifically how they learn to employ deceit. To test a childâs propensity to deceive â and his ability to do