Making the child own his/her actions
It is
important to realise that roots of Indian culture still vibrates in its
families and social-cultural values. Children must remain in emotional touch of
grand parents and other members of the family. Good and positive emotional
health brings complete growth of the child. It adds to immunity, resilience and
adaptability. Parents who are vigilant, observant and careful are the source of
emotional upbringing for the child. Emotional upbringing necessarily means to
cultivate values like modesty, concern, trustworthiness, empathy, honesty,
commitment, accountability, etc. These become the core values for him/her to
lead his/her happy and healthy life. Lack of values becomes source of negative
traits. The child who disowns his/her actions continuously in the childhood, is
less likely to develop the values of accountability, commitment, honesty or
trust in his later life and those become cause of concern for him/her.
A new
study published in Developmental Psychology examined lying in two and
three-year-old children and some of the cognitive skills involved with deception.
Conducted by Angela Evans of Brock University and Kang Lee of the University of
Toronto, the study used a series of executive functioning and verbal tasks as
well as two deception tasks to measure lying behaviour.
Based on their results, the authors suggested that
children as young as two years old were capable of spontaneous lying and that
lying behaviour rose dramatically by the time they were three years
old. The authors also suggested that this was not because younger
children were more honest but that they were less able to carry out the complex
cognitive tasks that went into telling lies. In other words, children
with better cognitive ability are capable of telling better
lies. All of which implies that lying is as much a
developmental milestone as any other cognitive task (if not the sort that
parents are likely to brag about). But developing a skill of lying by any means can not be justified in the name of the milestone. Let the child own his/her action and learn in the process, other varied characteristic features.
But is lying always negative? It's
tempting to argue that lying is also linked to creativity since the
ability to create fiction often relies on the same cognitive skills that go
into telling a successful lie. As children develop in their
cognitive capacity, the ability to balance more than one reality in their head
(which is what liars do when they create a fictional version of events to match
with the truth) becomes easier. It also means being able to
recognize the difference between fiction and reality, much like what they watch
on television as well as being able to create new stories. So parent's need to be cautious about all these studies because you as a parent is "NOT" preparing your child for a fiction.
However,
it is important to understand that lying can not be judged in isolation. Child
develops core values in tandem. These are interconnected, overlapping and need
to be developed through proper parenting.
How do I
know that my child does not own his/her action?- The child hides the facts whenever he/she has not completed the task. S/he may cook stories well built to hide that fact. In such cases you need to be vigilant and keep on asking very politely. One should never resort to punishment to infuse correction. Punishment encourages the child to lie.
- The child will avoid face-to-face contact, realising that he/she has to own an action which he/she did not.
- The child will immediately shift the ownership of task to someone else, not present in the scene.
You need to be vigilant, observant and at the same time modest, polite, loving, caring but strict to take guard of actions of your child.
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