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Lying to Children

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Why or Why not is it acceptable to lie to children?
By
Gregory Bryant

Most people when asked is it ok to lie to children would say, “of course, they don’t know the difference” and then leave it there. Think back to when you were a child and your parents told you that a man in a red suit named Santa Clause came down your chimney on Christmas and brought you presents if you were good. The agenda behind this lie was so that you would be good. Adults use lies for various reasons. Sometimes it’s so you don’t have to face consequences. Other times it’s to invoke a specific behavior. In the case of “Salvation” by Langston Hughes, lying to the children by telling “them they would see a light and something would happen to them inside wasn’t meant to be literal but was meant to evoke a response of willingness to come to God.
Some parents feel that it’s not ok to lie to children. They believe a child should know truth as soon as they can distinguish right from wrong, good from bad, and fantasy from reality. This would bring the child into adulthood sooner and gives them a more realistic view of the world. In the case of Santa Clause, parents will tell their children that there is no Santa Clause, that its mommy and daddy who bring presents to you and that Christmas is not really about gifts as much as it is about the birth of Christ. Parents will save the child from seeing the holiday as a financial endeavor and see the holiday as a religious or spiritual holiday thus detaching the child from the financial aspect of Christmas.

Children are smart; they pick things up sometimes before we think they do whether it is from their friends or from schoolmates. This is the time where the questions start and children become aware that they are deceiving people as in the case of Langston Hughes when he says”I started crying because I couldn’t bear to tell my aunt that

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