Γιατί το παιδί μου λέει ψέματα; Οι πιο συχνοί λόγοι και πώς να το διαχειριστείς

Έχεις γνωρίσει παιδί που να μην έχει πει ποτέ κανένα ψέμα;

ΓΡΑΦΕΙ: The Mamagers Team - 28 ΜΑΙΟΥ, 2025




Έχεις γνωρίσει παιδί που να μην έχει πει ποτέ κανένα ψέμα; Κάποια είναι πολύ χαριτωμένα (μια πριγκίπισσα μου χτένισε τα μαλλιά σήμερα), κάποια είναι ανούσια (δεν ξέρω που είναι το μολύβι μου) και κάποια είναι πιο ανησυχητικά (έπεσα από τις σκάλες στο σχολείο/η δασκάλα μου είπε ότι είμαι ο καλύτερος μαθητής). Γιατί τα παιδιά λένε ψέματα, πώς πρέπει να αντιδράμε και πότε πρέπει να το δούμε πιο σοβαρά; Σύμφωνα με τους παιδοψυχολόγους, τα παιδιά καταλαβαίνουν τη διαφορά ανάμεσα στο ψέμα και στην αλήθεια μετά την ηλικία των 4-5 ετών. Τα μικρότερα παιδιά μπερδεύουν τα φανταστικό και το αληθινό. Μπορεί να έχουν σκεφτεί κάτι ή να το έχουν δει κάπου και να το αναφέρουν ως προσωπικό τους βίωμα και ως αληθινό γεγονός. Σταδιακά μετά την ηλικία των 4 ετών διαχωρίζουν καλύτερα την πραγματικότητα από τη σκέψη και τη φαντασία.
Γιατί τα παιδιά λένε ψέματα;


Για να καταλάβουμε οι γονείς πώς πρέπει να αντιδράσουμε σε ένα ψέμα, οφείλουμε να δούμε τις αιτίες για τις οποίες μπορεί ένα παιδί να πει ψέματα.


Μόλις έμαθαν... τι είναι ψέμα: Το παιδί ανακάλυψε το ψέμα και πρέπει να το δοκιμάσει. Πώς θα αντιδράσει η μαμά μου; Θα με πιστέψει;
Θέλει την προσοχή: Ένα παιδί που είναι αγχωμένο ή περνάει κάτι και δεν μπορεί να το εκφράσει συναισθηματικά μπορεί να πει ένα ψέμα για να τραβήξει την προσοχή, για να έχει περισσότερη φροντίδα (π.χ. μαμά πονάει ο λαιμός μου) ή λένε ένα ψέμα για να κρύψουν τι περνάνε.
Απλά δεν το σκέφτονται: Η παρορμητικότητα στα παιδιά είναι διάχυτη για αυτό δεν αποκλείεται να πουν ένα ψέμα χωρίς καν να το σκεφτούν. Με λίγα λόγια, μιλάνε πριν σκεφτούν! Σε αυτές τις περιπτώσεις, αρκεί να ρωτήσεις το ίδιο πράγμα και να του δώσεις την ευκαιρία να πει την αλήθεια!
Θέλει να ξεχωρίσει: Τα παιδιά με χαμηλή αυτοεκτίμηση λένε ψέματα για να φανούν, να ξεχωρίσουν και να εντυπωσιάσουν τους άλλους.
Λένε αθώα ψέματα: Μια δεξιότητα που μαθαίνουν από τους γονείς, συνήθως, κάποια παιδιά θα πουν ένα ψέμα που δεν βλάπτει (δεν μπορούσα να έρθω στο πάρτι σου) συνήθως για να προστατεύσουν κάποιον (κι εγώ φοβήθηκα χθες όταν φώναξε η δασκάλα).




Τι μπορούν να κάνουν οι γονείς για να σταματήσουν τα παιδιά να λένε ψέματα




Δείχνουμε στα παιδιά ότι εκτιμάμε την ειλικρίνεια. Κάθε φορά που λένε την αλήθεια πρέπει να τα επαινούμε για τη (δύσκολη, πολλές φορές) απόφασή τους να πουν την αλήθεια.
Επαναλαμβάνουμε την ερώτηση: Δίνουμε μια δεύτερη ευκαιρία στο παιδί να πει την αλήθεια (βούρτσισες τα δόντια σου;). Εάν πει την αλήθεια το επαινούμε, διαφορετικά θα πρέπει να κατανοήσει ότι υπάρχουν συνέπειες.
Έχουμε ενσυναίσθηση: Εάν το παιδί δεν μπορεί να εκφράσει τα συναισθήματά του και καταφεύγει σε ένα ψέμα (δεν πήρα το παιχνίδι του) πρέπει να σκεφτούμε γιατί το έκανε (ήθελε να παίξει και ζήλευε το παιχνίδι του αδελφού του). Τότε εστιάζουμε στην αιτία, μαθαίνουμε στο παιδί πώς να ζητάει ευγενικά και να μοιράζεται.
Οι τιμωρίες δεν λειτουργούν: Οι τιμωρίες δεν διορθώνουν τον λόγο που οδήγησε το παιδί στο να πει ψέματα, αντίθετα το πεισμώνουν και το κάνουν να νιώθει ότι "κανείς δεν καταλαβαίνει".
Ενισχύουμε τη συνήθεια της αλήθειας. Εστιάζουμε στη θετική συμπεριφορά και επιβραβεύουμε την αλήθεια με λέξεις, με συναίσθημα και με ένα φιλί ή μια αγκαλιά.
Σε ένα σοβαρό ψέμα, καταφεύγουμε στις... συνέπειες! Αντί για τιμωρίες αφήνουμε τη δυνατότητα στο παιδί να ανακαλύψει ότι για τα ψέματα, υπάρχουν συνέπειες. Αν κάθε μέρα πετάει το φαγητό του στο σχολείο και δεν το τρώει, τότε δεν του δίνουμε λεφτά για το κυλικείο. Αν ένα μεγαλύτερο παιδί δεν διαβάζει συστηματικά, τότε θα πρέπει να το ελέγχετε εσείς καθημερινά μέχρι να κερδίσει ξανά την εμπιστοσύνη σας.




ΠΗΓΗ:

https://www.themamagers.gr/family/110713/giati-to-paidi-moy-leei-psemata-oi-pio-sychnoi-logoi-kai-pos-na-to-diacheiristeis(accessed 30.5.25)

When parents lie to their children

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We teach our kids that it is wrong to lie, even though most of us do it everyday. In fact, it is often our children who we are lying to. A new study, involving participants in the USA and China, is one of the first to investigate parental lies, finding that the majority of parents tell their children lies as a way to control their behaviour.

Gail Heyman and her colleagues presented 114 parents in the USA and 85 in China with 16 so-called "instrumental lies" in four categories - lies intended to influence the kids' eating habits (e.g. "you need to finish all your food or you will get pimples all over your face"); lies to get the children to leave or stay put (e.g. "If you don't come with me now, I will leave you here by yourself); lies to control misbehaviour (e.g. "If you don't behave I will call the police"); and finally, lies to do with shopping and money (e.g. "I did not bring any money with me today. We can come back another day.").

Eighty-four per cent of US parents and 98 per cent of Chinese parents admitted telling at least one of the 16 lies to their children, and a majority of parents in both countries admitted to telling lies from three of the four categories. The exception was the misbehaviour category - just under half the US parents said they told lies to make their children behaviour better, compared with 80 per cent of Chinese parents.

The lie that the greatest proportion of parents said they told was threatening to leave a child behind if he/she refused to follow the parent. Rates of lying by parents were higher in China than in the US, especially in relation to misbehaviour and eating. The Chinese parents also viewed instrumental lying by parents with more approval than the US parents did; at the same time, they (the Chinese) viewed lying by children with more disapproval. "This cross-cultural difference may reflect greater concern with social cohesiveness and a greater emphasis on respect and obedience," the researchers said.

Asked why they told instrumental lies to their children, parents across both countries talked in terms of a cost-benefit trade-off and the stress of getting children to comply. Other times it was felt children would struggle to understand the truth, such as the complexities of the family budget.

As well as looking at instrumental lies, the study also asked parents about untruths they told their children regarding fantasy characters like the tooth-fairy, or to make their children feel better, for example praising a poor piano performance. Here there were no cultural differences in rates of lie-telling, although the Chinese parents showed less approval toward lying about the existence of fictional characters.

The study has limitations, as acknowledged by the researchers. The two samples differed in other ways besides their culture - the US parents being more highly educated, for example. And of course there was a reliance on self-report rather than an observation or record of actual lies told. Despite these issues, Heyman said their study "helps fill a void in an understudied area that may have strong implications for children's social and moral development."
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SOURCE:

RESEARCH DIGEST BLOG: http://www.researchdigest.org.uk/

Heyman, G., Hsu, A., Fu, G., & Lee, K. (2012). Instrumental lying by parents in the US and China. International Journal of Psychology, 1-9 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207594.2012.746463
Author weblink: http://heymanlab.ucsd.edu/
 

Liar, liar pants on fire

Children first fib and practise
to deceive when they’re still in
the cradle, according to a new
book. Honest, says Jo Carlowe

“I did not have a biscuit,” says the toddler, his

face the picture of innocence, despite the chocolate

and crumbs smeared around his lips.

Such fibs are a universal feature of childhood;

we’ve all told porkies, or heard them

from our youngsters. But a controversial new

book suggests that children start fibbing at a

much younger age than previously thought,

even as young as eight months old.

Published this week by Harvard University

Press, How Infants Know Minds, by Vasudevi

Reddy, a professor of developmental and cultural

psychology at the University of Portsmouth,

details how children use deception. 

Reddy describes how babies as young as eight months

can fake crying and laughter. She talks of ninemonth-

olds who, unwilling to stop playing,

feign deafness despite their mothers’ calls; and

of babies not yet one year old acting innocent

when caught doing something forbidden. By

the time the children in Reddy’s studies were

2½ they were indulging in face-saving lies, often

ready to blame siblings, to avoid punishment.

However, as familiar as Reddy’s observations

may seem to many of us, she is challenging

the established line. 

The conventional view suggests that children are capable of genuine

deception only once they have developed a

“theory of mind”. This means they understand

that people have different beliefs from their

own. This develops from about four years old,

and so, according to exponents of the theory,

children cannot lie until that age.

Even infants try to fool their parents

The theory stems from a series of experimental

tests carried out by the psychologists H. Wimmer

and J. Perner in the early 1980s to see if

young children could attribute a false belief to

other people.

But having watched more than 50 children,

ranging from seven weeks old to pre-school

age, in a series of studies, Reddy says her observations

do not tally with the textbook view.

Most of her work has involved observing

infants in their homes, sometimes every week.

She recently published her findings, Deception

and Social Living, in the Royal Society journal

Philosophical Transactions.

From Reddy’s studies, it soon became clear

that infants were attempting to fool parents at

a far younger age than predicted. “We spend

too much of our time treating infants as preparing

to live social lives when they “grow up”

rather than acknowledging that they are

already living such lives now,” she says.

Reddy’s work is controversial

However, many child experts remain sceptical

about her claims. Dr Richard Woolfson, a child

psychologist, writer and honorary lecturer at

the University of Strathclyde, believes that

adults sometimes misconstrue signals. “When a

baby ‘feigns deafness’ the child is saying, ‘I am

concentrating on what I am doing’ rather than,

‘I’ll pretend not to hear you’. Being egocentric,

she thinks she is the centre of the world and will

do what she wants.”

However, while Professor David Messer, of

the Open University Centre for Childhood Development

and Learning, accepts that babies do

engage in “social referencing” from about nine

or ten months—which means that they look to

others to see how to react to events—he is not

sure that this means they are capable of deception.

He does, however, support Reddy’s belief

that the capacity to deceive occurs at a younger

age than previously thought.

“Children over 16 to 18 months use pretend

play, which suggests that they can distinguish

between reality and pretending. There can’t be
a switch over at 4; it is a more gradual process.”
But why do youngsters deceive us, and
should parents be worried? Research has
shown that children are rubbish liars — they
succeed in convincing us less than 15 per cent of
the time, and yet they persist. Reddy says this
must mean that deception in babies and toddlers
is not just about self-preservation or
pursuit of gain. Instead, she believes they
deceive to learn about the world. What starts
out as a game, or a way to avoid punishment,
becomes a route by which they can test which
behaviours elicit approval or success and which
failure or reproach.

Woolfson cautions against taking too punitive
a line. Infants do not lie to be bad. They
deceive to be playful or in response to an outside
threat (such as a parent getting angry).
That said, he says some lies should be taken seriously.
So, if your child falsely blames a sibling,
Woolfson says you should calmly state: “It was
not your sister. Do not do it again.”
And while Reddy accepts that parents
should help their children to understand the difference
between truth and falsehood, she says
this should not override any more immediate
needs that a child may have.

Reddy’s research focused mainly on infants
aged six months to three years. They deceive in
an attempt to engage others in emotional dialogue,
says Reddy, which may take the form of
getting attention, or enjoying the parents’ reactions
of surprise or amusement. Deception is
about playfulness and social experimentation
rather than anything sinister.“If the child is
weaving an intricate fantasy with great seriousness,
it is far more important to trust your sympathetic
response and respect the fantasy than
to clarify its untruth. Similarly, if the child is
seeking help or attention by using some fake expression
or excuse, it is likely to be more important
to be sensitive to what that other need is in
the child and try to meet it, than to put the child
right about ‘knowing the truth’.”
And she points out the importance of taking
a light-hearted approach to playful tricks. “It is
more important to let yourself appear to be
taken by surprise than to reveal that you know
the truth. The key thing is to respect the child’s
motivations, to enjoy their creativity and be
loving in response to their needs,” she says.
And yet, reassuring as this sounds, I worry
that my three-year-old son’s liberal take on
truthfulness could carry forward into adulthood.

Reddy’s views on early deception are recent;
as yet, there have been no studies exploring
why some children lie but others don’t, and
whether those that do continue to do so when
they are older. The experts say parents should
not panic; children use deception to learn about
the world. But if, in a few decades, I find my son
in Parliament, I won’t be overly surprised.



SOURCE:

JAMES CLARKE. THE TIMES Saturday April 19 2008