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by Obscurity4340·2y ago·view on hn ↗
It certainly gives you more ammunition as a teen to distrust and venture the things your parents also taught you or implied were dangerous. It also teaches your children to believe foolish and questionable speech+conduct on the part of authority figures which has creates many other problems.

Why is it necessary? Why do you need to lie to your children? Teaching them that lying is "fun" is absurd, so many problems are rooted in tradition and "because I said so" or belief in mythical good and bad guys and boogiemen.

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> Why is it necessary? Why do you need to lie to your children?

I prefer to be straight with my young kids when possible, but even I have to admit that mythical type stories carry a lot more staying power with young kids than a stern warning about real danger from their parents.

The context we have as adults about the consequences of things like death are not fully developed in young children. However, they pick up on stories and remember details of stories very clearly.

Moving important lessons into the context of stories makes them resonate more with young children. It’s as simple as that. You can also give them the real-world explanation at the same time, but the story version will almost always have better staying power in a child’s mind.

I think there's a difference also between telling a story with lessons embedded and straight-up lying and saying Santa/God is watching and you have him on speed-dial. That is absolutely pathetic and ridiculous and I'll admit it continues to influence my perception of this discussion
I agree with you, it's one thing to be lying for 'fanciful' things - "Santa is bringing you presents" versus "We're your family and love you very much and want to give you things", the Easter bunny, etc, versus "We're in the Artic Circle. If you fall and trip in this water, it means hypothermia, near drowning, or death."

As you say, children struggle with the concept of death, as any parent who has had to explain the death of a pet to a young child will attest. Depending on age, no matter how you attempt to describe, there's always that "but they're coming back, right?"

My first child called cemeteries “zombie farms.”
"They" gotta start somewhere...
The problem with distrust caused by the Santa lie (for example) is that adults don’t believe in Santa. If everyone believed in Santa (or paid lip service to the belief, at least, which is how it always goes with religion, etc) then it would just be a nice cultural element that wouldn’t cause any distrust.
> It certainly gives you more ammunition as a teen to distrust and venture the things your parents also taught you or implied were dangerous.

So a good thing then?

Not really, they already pick that up organically from their peers at that age, I maintain that it makes you less credible as a parent/guide to them. If you help them with the easy questions, they're more liky to seek you out for the hard ones.

Also, long before that, you've cultivated a tradition of believing ridiculous nonsense for which there's no easy cure or gurantee it can be remedied before it ends up creating even bigger problems

It is always easier to lie to the gullibles to get them to do what you want.