Why does my toddler lie?

All adults know that there are lies, and then there are lies. While we understand that sometimes everyone has to tell a lie – usually to avoid hurting someone’s feelings - children lie for reasons that may not be obvious to grown-ups.

• More than doing the ‘right thing’, your toddler wants to please you – and so if he’s done something he knows that you’ll be unhappy with, he may lie about it to avoid making you angry with him.
• Your toddler may have more incentive to lie – because he fears the punishment that will follow – than to tell the truth.
• He may model the behaviour he witnesses in the home – he doesn’t understand the concept of a little white lie.
• Young children often lie because they don’t fully understand the difference between reality and fantasy. Until he's 3 or 4, your toddler won't really understand the concept of lying, because he also doesn't yet understand the idea of truth based on fact.
• Your toddler may be tempted to stretch the truth with a bit of wishful thinking. Sometimes, when your toddler wishes one thing happened instead of another – that his sister fell over running rather than as a result of him pushing her – he may believe that by telling it the way he wished it happened, it may make it so.

 

This article was written by Ella Walsh for Kidspot. Sources include SA Government’s Parenting and Child Health