The Whole Truth

In some cases where it might be considered socially appropriate and even polite to tell a lie, such as when receiving a disappointing gift or being served an unsavory meal, parents may actually encourage kids to lie — and kids generally do as they're told, Talwar says. In a study published last year in the International Journal of Behavioral Development, she and her colleagues observed how more than 300 children ages 3 to 11 responded after receiving a wrapped up bar of plain white soap instead of an expected cool toy. Kids were more likely to lie to the gift-giver and say they liked the gift when parents encouraged them to lie than when parents didn't coach them at all.

In more serious circumstances, such as the death of a relative or even a pet, young children cannot always process all the unpleasant details of the truth, Talwar and other experts say.

At these times, "parents have to weigh the risks and the benefits" of telling the truth and how much of it, says Dr. William Coleman, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics and a professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

A young child, for instance, could be deeply troubled by knowing that a relative or beloved pet was buried in the ground or cremated, he explains, so what's the point in divulging those details?

That doggie farm in the sky
When Eileen Neuwirth's dog died several months ago, she and her husband told their preschooler that the dog went to heaven. In hindsight, though, she wishes she'd told her son the classic white lie about the dog going off to a big farm to live happily ever after frolicking with the other animals.

"The idea of heaven really weighs on his mind and he is constantly asking about it," says Neuwirth, 32, who lives in the Los Angeles area. "I think that the notion is too abstract for him but he gets it enough for it to make him insecure. … He tells me all of the time that when I go to heaven he will be so mad that he will knock all of his toys and our whole house down. It's so sweet and heartbreaking because I can see the anxiety in his face when he thinks about it."

After an elderly neighbor died, Neuwirth tried to use the occasion to explain to her son, who's 3, that people — and dogs — usually die and go to heaven when they get really old, like the neighbor and their dog. But it doesn't seem to have helped. "Again, it was too much info," she says.

Neuwirth says all the parenting advice she heard and read about prompted her to be true to her beliefs. But her own experience hearing the farm story from her mother when she was 7 and her dog died showed her that sometimes honesty may not be the best approach. "It wasn't until my sisters and I were in our teens that we all figured out what had really happened," she remembers. "I feel that her white lie spared us all from the anxiety and trauma we likely would have felt had she told us the truth."

Snowballing tales
The risk of telling the farm story, though, is that the child may then endlessly ask to go visit the dog on the farm and wonder why he can't, says Talwar. "The problem with telling a lie is it's not always as easy as you think."

Lies have the potential to snowball and cause more problems, she notes. One of her colleagues, for instance, decided to replace a child's dead hamster rather than explaining that it died. But the new model was thinner, leading to more lies about how the animal went on a diet while the child was away on a day trip, and on and on.

Every situation and every child are different, and there aren't always simple solutions, says Jonathan Pochyly, a psychologist at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago who specializes in anxiety disorders and counsels youngsters who are grappling with issues such as moving, divorce, and death or illness in the family.