Believe it? A researcher says that your baby learns how to lie to you at 6 months old, initially by crying when nothing is wrong to see what will happen. Then it evolves from there. Certainly, I have seen my two-year-old being deliberately deceptive – if she goes into another room and is doing something she knows she shouldn’t be doing, she immediately changes activities when I walk into the room. Or, when she’s loading up a diaper but is too busy playing to have it changed, she denies having filled her pants.
For a baby of 6 months, though, I wonder if it’s so much being deceptive as it is checking to see if mommy’s still there even though baby can’t see her. I have a hard time believing it’s deliberate deception at that early an age.
Crossposted at RomanCatholicByChoice!
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I don't buy it at all. Babies at that developmental level are still going through object permanence, separation anxiety, etc. They lie? I don't think so. More like they reach out as they learn to trust and love. I know it's this theory (them lying) that makes so many people turn to those cry-it-out methods.I'm with you on the 2 year olds, though. At that age, my son wouod deny his stink if it meant he oculd continue playing! lol
The term lie is shock value. Babies do all kinds of things to experiment with their environment. I have heard my 7 month old fake cry and pretend laugh for a couple months, but it is pretty clear (the real thing is much different). I don't call that lying – I call that experimenting and learning. The article and the psychologists are using this as shock value to get attention to their research. This is more akin to later pretending than to lying which implies an intent to deceive.They are right in that children at that age are beginning to learn that they can "fake" things. My daughter likes to fake laugh to get her siblings to laugh. It becomes a game.What the article/psychologists are doing is akin to calling an actor a liar.On the other hand, sometimes babies cry, but they have no idea why (e.g., they are tired) – I call that cranky. And sometimes, the best answer is to let them cry for a few minutes to see if they go to sleep – that seems unrelated to the whole "lying" idea though.
A lot of "bad" behaviour in very young children just comes down to immaturity and development, I reckon.The article and the psychologists are using this as shock value to get attention to their research.There. It's probably a funding issue!Also, very young children may have a developing conscience, but I think it probably takes several years to be developed enough that they can be fully culpable for bad actions. Traditionally, seven has been seen as the age of reason.
Babies are coming to grips with their most primal and basic perceptions and senses, and physical selves. They understand hunger, and they know food, and they know the comfort of a human parent's presence.Skinner-type conditioning theories make sense (reinforcing patterns of behaviour that obtain desired results) but it's a bit fanciful to call it a lie. It's all pretty gut-level and unconscious. It's manipulation, but it's not exactly deception. Maybe the baby really is unhappy. Is the baby just being unhappy for no reason, just to manipulate the parent? Come on, eh.W