Most mothers and fathers practice “Pinocchio parenting” — teaching their kids that lying is bad while regularly fibbing to them, according to a pair of new studies in the Journal of Moral Education.
Researchers at the University of Toronto and the University of California found that parents who stress the importance of truth-telling to their little ones quite often tell lies to influence the children’s behaviour or emotions, whether it’s an idle threat to make them eat their peas or boost their confidence by praising their ear-splitting saxophone solo.
“Because it’s easy, we just do it,” Dr. Kang Lee of the University of Toronto tells the Globe and Mail. “Some parents may have been doing it for years and they really have no idea they are actually telling lies.” Lee’s study doesn’t look at the impact of Pinocchio Parenting on kids, but he confesses he’s guilty of it himself.
To quell his son’s habit of fidgeting in his car-seat, the savvy dad renamed the hazard button on his dashboard the “eject” button. If dad presses the button, six-year-old Nathan thinks he’ll be catapulted from the vehicle. “I just put my hand over it” and Nathan behaves, Dr. Lee says.
Teachers in particular are guilty of what the researchers describe as the “confidence boosting lie” — telling students they are excellent writers, for example, when in fact they are average or worse. Teachers in my elementary school trained in the Teacher’s College Writer’s Workshop were expected to give a compliment to every student at the start of each “conference” and required to record it in our conference notes. The intended effect obviously was to boost confidence and inspire additional effort. The danger (equally obvious) was that students might overestimate their ability, slack off, and be set up for disappointment later on.
Yes,, and parents praise kids’ ‘art work’, letting the little darlings think they are the next Picasso. I no longer recall who tipped me off to the fact that what kids really want in attention and connection. Now when my 2.5 yr old granddaughter comes to me I observe what she has done, saying things such as “Look how strong your black lines are here and how gently and fluffy looking these lines are. I see you have made many little loops.” Not a word of praise and yet strangely enough she loves it!
children love feedback about what they are doing and how they seem to feel about it. “You seem satisfied that . . .” “You look frustrated by . . .” and such. I demonstrate my interest in them and what they are doing and my availability to them.
One of the first principles is to model the behavior you want. Give attention to get attention. Tell the truth to get the truth. Little kids are not stupid!
Comment by Homeschooling Granny — October 1, 2009 @ 1:04 pm
This is a very interesting topic that I have only seen discussed here in this forum but it is something that I have thought about for many years. I taught Theatre at a school in South America and my first production with my students who had unfortunately had a different Director for 3 years in a row was nothing short of a minor disaster. The students refused to learn their lines until the day the show went up and in some cases not really even then, leaving no time for character development and polishing of the show. They were under the impression that I was going to change the dates or postpone the show as their previous directors had done. I did not. I told them it was their butts out on stage and what did they want them to look like? On opening night they went up in lines and we almost had to stop the show. What could have been a beautiful drama was snickering behind the hands comedy and an embarrassment to their talents and opportunities. I just sat in the theatre as each of them checked out after hanging up costumes and washing away their make up. I said nothing but they could sense my disappointment. The next day I was met by a flood of teachers who vehemently insisted that I tell these kids that they had done a “good job” and how proud I was of them. The students were upset because I was disappointed in them. I refused and was vilified by my some of my colleagues over it. The second night went considerably better but still nowhere near what they were capable of accomplishing because even in theatre “magic” rarely happens overnight. It usually only comes through hard work and dedication. These students learned from this and we never had a production like that again. In fact we had some of my most memorable productions ever after that.
It is my belief that students have an intuition that goes beyond even many adults. They can smell BS a mile away! They sense fear and they know a weak teacher and just exactly how much they can get away with in the classroom. When you lie to them, you are losing their respect and trust. I am very demanding of my students and I expect more out of them than they think they are capable of because 1) I know they can do it and 2) I love them. Students will rise to your expectations. While you may not be their buddy when you are telling them all this or putting them through the paces, you will earn their respect. To this day I tell my cast members that I only ask on thing out of them and they can all tell you what it is; 100% effort 100% of the time! They have every right to expect the same from me and if they feel that I am not giving it they have an obligation to call me out just as I will do to them.
I believe that many student’s lives have been changed because of this philosophy. Students will face challenges in life that are much more difficult than a high school play. However, because of their experience they will know that they can dig down deep inside themselves and become much more than they ever thought that they could.
20 years this year!
Mark Webber
Khartoum International Community School
Sudan, Africa
Comment by Mark Webber — October 2, 2009 @ 5:14 am
There’s a difference between telling a child that they’re an excellent writer, and saying, for example “You did a good job at weaving those numbers into the paragraph in a way that made sense”, or whatever makes sense in the context of the kid’s writing.
I write a lot for my job, and I also review a lot of other writers’ work, and it’s valuable to get a sense of what you’ve done right as well as where you’ve gone wrong. I once did a chunk of work for a guy who never provided any positive feedback, if he didn’t see any mistakes he just wouldn’t provide anything, it was very frustrating as how do you know what is really working? I can’t have been too bad because he kept hiring me, but churning out the same stuff all the time is boring and I didn’t know what to change to improve my work. And of course, kids don’t even have the incentive of money keeping hitting their bank account.
Comment by Tracy W — October 2, 2009 @ 6:04 am
Tracy’s comment gets at the truth of this issue. You don’t have to “lie” to children (in fact, calling only-positive comments “lies” is using language to distort the argument). But providing no feedback except a list of what’s wrong (and they’re kids–so LOTS of things are wrong), is just as counterproductive. Beating kids up with constant criticism, contrary to a lot of movie plots, doesn’t make them tougher or inspire them, unless they’ve already got a well-formed sense of their own capacity.
Letting kids publicly embarrass themselves in a spotlight performance could backfire in some pretty horrific ways (and I say this as a music teacher, who totally gets the discipline needed to put on an excellent concert). Why would you do that, if you could prevent it? And–isn’t it the teachers’ job to help kids understand the difference between crummy, half-hearted, fully prepared and genuinely excellent–even if it involves a certain amount of coercion? We have to constantly put examples of superior work in front of them–that’s where inspiration and evaluation come in.
This whole argument about overinflated egos and never getting tough on kids feels fishy to me. Most parents want other kids to buckle down and understand their failings, but when it comes to their own children, they prefer a much more constructive approach.
Comment by Nancy Flanagan — October 2, 2009 @ 1:31 pm
I tried hard not to lie to my daughter. I realized that “If you don’t stop that, I’ll never take you anywhere again” was untrue and unpersuasive. So I said, “If you don’t stop that, I’ll be mean and cranky. Would you rather have a cheerful, pleasant mother or a mean, cranky mother?” This was the real consequence of bad behavior; my daughter wisely chose cheerful and pleasant.
As for praise, when Allison was young, she produced many pictures of a house, flowers and birds flying overhead. I believe if you placed all the pictures drawn by children in the U.S. in a line based on quality, her pictures would be in the exact center.
“Mommy, do you like my picture?”
“Yes!”
“Why do you like it?”
(Because you’re my daughter and you made it . . . No.) “I like the bright colors you used.”
What else do you like?
“Um, I like the way you drew the bird so it looks like it’s flying.”
“What else?”
“I like the flowers. They’re very cheerful.”
“What else?”
“That’s it.”
She produced many copies of this picture and we had this conversation many times. It was always the same three things, because it was always the same picture.
Comment by Joanne Jacobs — October 5, 2009 @ 5:13 pm
I comment on my students’ writing by always giving a postive and true comment. For some of these fifth grade students, the only comment I can think of is I am glad you capitalized the letter I when referring to yourself, or your handwriting is extremely neat. Other students the compliments are more complex. All compliments are followed with items that they can use to improve their writing skills. This was an interesting subject.
Comment by Darla — October 5, 2009 @ 7:11 pm
You have slanted your interpretation of workshop teaching with one HUGE misinterpretation, among others. We don’t tell students that they are excellent writers, instead we name for a student one thing that they are doing well in their writing. We are not “lying” to them, but rather being honest about a strength. Students do have strengths, even as they also have things they must work on.
Comment by A Teacher's College advocate — October 28, 2009 @ 4:12 pm