When Young Children Lie
The average person admits to telling 1.65 lies per day according to one study done on the subject, although even the researchers confess that since they, by necessity, had to rely on self-reporting, people were probably lying toward the low end. Of course, it could also be that we all define things differently: some may consider nothing but outright falsehoods to be lying, while others may be sensitive to even those small lies of omission or exaggeration we commit by way of burnishing our own reputations or saving the feelings of others.
But however we look at it, we all, to some extent, lie. I try not to lie. You try not to lie. Most of us have internalized the maxim that honesty is the best policy, yet at the end of the day, if we're truthful with ourselves, we can always look back and find those moments when we at least did not tell the full truth. And this is not necessarily a bad thing: evolutionary biologists tell us that lying is an essential part of our evolution as a species, that the ability to tell and detect lies is an important aspect of developing our social intelligence. Of course, as adults, most of us have learned that an over-reliance upon lying is destructive to our social and emotional CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: When Young Children Lie
