NTU study finds parental lying is linked to lie-telling in children

A new study by NTU suggests that parenting by lying could have unintended consequences. In a live 14-min interview, NTU’s Assoc Prof Setoh Peipei, who led the study, shared more about the findings. She said the team’s motivation for conducting this study is to find out if children actually believe their parents’ lies and whether these beliefs can shape their own lies to parents in childhood, given that parental lying is very common around the world. “Our study is one of the first to examine parenting by lying during childhood. And in our study, we are interested in examining the kinds of lies parents tell their children and whether children believed their parents… The key message here is that if you lie to your kids, they are more likely to lie back to you, and that has negative consequences,” she said. “As parents, we can think about constructive ways to handle the situations without lying. We can listen to children's feelings, provide each appropriate accurate information, and then begin to invite them to problem solve together. This will help them understand the world better, develop their reasoning skills and also emotion regulation on their own, and such practices can help us build an open, honest and positive relationship with our children,” she added.

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