Kids lie, this article informs us, for four reasons: avoiding punishment, gaining autonomy, exerting control, and because they learned it from watching their parents.
And they do it a lot. In the study described, teens went through a deck of cards representing topics about which they might lie to their parents. They described lying about spending, dating, parties, 'bad' friends, drinking, doing drugs, and--everyone's gonna love this--riding in cars being driven by someone under the influence.
Interestingly enough, the teens themselves ended up being a little shocked by all this; for the most part, they didn't see themselves as lying, even though they were. Researchers theorize that this is because their main motive was not to deceive per se, but to reassure.
And to prop up their self-image. "Having to tell parents about it can be psychologically emasculating," says the article.
It would appear that there's no way to stop this, although families with the stereotypical few-hard-and-fast-rules combined with being "warm" and approachable do manage to cut it down by about half.
Well...actually there is a way to stop it. Cold.
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"A few parents [in the study] managed to live up to the stereotype of the oppressive parent, with lots of psychological intrusion."
And that's the trick. Don't want your kid lying to you? Break 'em.
"Those teens," reports the article, "weren't rebelling. They were obedient."
Of course there's going to be a slight catch:
"And depressed."
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As a teenager, I was obedient.
All those things the teens were lying about in that study? I couldn't have lied to my parents about any of that even if I'd wanted to, because I wasn't doing it. Any of it.
I was obedient.
And I was depressed.
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But then, it also works the other way around: I was depressed...and I was obedient.
This, to me, is the key flaw of the study: how do they actually know which came first? Those teenagers, are they depressed because they're obedient or are they obedient because they're depressed? The parents who seem "intrusive," is that because they ARE intrusive, or because they've had to pick up the slack for their paralyzed offspring?
Either way, though...those kids are up the creek. They may not be riding in cars with drunk people, but believe me, that doesn't mean they're okay.
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A year or so ago, my mom kind of looked at me sadly and said "You never got to have the fun of being young."
But I remember those years very clearly, and I didn't want to have the fun of being young.
After reading that article, though, I see that I missed something much more important than fun. I missed something more important than "having a life." I missed selfhood. By an even wider margin than I thought. I thought selfhood was just about what went on in your head (which for me was self-annihilating enough, since after a certain point I stopped imagining myself completely and dropped out of my own mental life). But no, it's more than that.
The teenagers who lie--they have things to lie about. They have a separate interior space that's actually real, not just in their heads. If you have something to lie about, you have a self.
I never did.
I'm almost not sure I do now.
