Psychological Warfare: The Common Tactics Kids Use for Getting What They Want
As kids grow, they master the subtleties of persuasion and learn the connections between what they do and whether they get their way. As a simple example, imagine a kid asking for something, such as an item they see in the store that suddenly seems too good to live without. At a very young age, the child will just announce what they want and will (potentially) cry or get angry if denied because at that age, the hurt they feel goes quite deep on being denied something that seems so important in the moment. This child is acting and reacting to the environment, and isn’t really attempting anything covert in terms of a strategy to achieve a goal. Contrast this with a child a few years older, who knows that throwing a fit is going to get a big reaction and may even result in a concession on behalf of the parent. Now what was once a reactive response has changed into a power-based tactic. Next, kids grow into the ability to present requests in exchange for doing something of value (eating vegetables at dinner to get dessert, or helping with laundry to earn a new game). Their repertoire will grow with them, increasing their chances of getting their way.
Stories from Home: My son tries to convince me that it’s in my best interest to do what he wants. He says things like “if you let me watch more TV, I won’t bother you so that you can get the rest of your work done.”
While kids of all ages have been known to throw all-out fits when they don’t get their way in the hopes of inspiring a change of heart, even the youngest children can also surprise us with a well-reasoned argument.
Stories from Home: When my son was three, he asked me for something. Seeing a chance to introduce some of the logic of negotiations to him, I responded by telling him that that thing was mine, and asking him what he would give to me if I let him have it? He thought for a minute and then said, “I’ll give you one more chance to behave in a sharing way, Daddy.” At that moment, my wife asked me not to try negotiating with our kids, noting that I was probably outclassed!
One research team interviewed, analyzed, and then classified the types of strategies that a hundred sets of parents and children (ages twelve–fifteen) were using to try and influence one another.1 Two main types of strategies emerged:
•The rational appeals: These include the “if you do this, I’ll do that” offers of money, time, or effort for getting something, as well as the reasoning strategies of explaining why a decision is the right one (such as “if you’re willing to get the cheaper boots instead of the name-brand ones, you will have a lot more money left over for other things”).
•The persuasion approach: This can include everything from begging, whining, and pleading to enlisting a grandparent for support or using emotion (sweet-talk or a guilt trip) to sway a decision. Parents might use a delay tactic (“We’ll see” instead of “No”) in much the same vein.
The rational appeals are relatively straightforward, and are likely to happen in much the same way in many different situations and across many different families. The persuasion approaches, however, are more nuanced and unfold in different ways across kids and situations; your kids quickly grow into experts on what works on you.
Sometimes persuasion even spills over into manipulation. That term is generally used to mean trying to take unfair advantage of someone, and of course, sometimes this is indeed the case between children and parents. However, more often persuasion is the act of working to change a situation to one’s advantage. Notice that trying to get what you want does not automatically mean that what you want is unfair to the other side. Most childhood persuasion attempts are done not with the intent to actually harm the other side, but just to get their way, even if that means stepping over the line of reasonable, fair, or even honest behavior.
This is an important distinction when it comes to dealing with kids because let’s face it, what most kids are, more so than truly manipulative, is self-centered. Though they may start to develop the ability to take another person’s perspective as early as age five or so,2 it takes an entire childhood to truly understand how one’s actions affect other people, as well as to understand things from their parents’ point of view. To both be able to and want to take that into account when choosing how to act takes time.
But childhood is not necessarily a linear progression toward more reasonable behavior. As kids get older, their repertoire of persuasive tactics grows. This is partly because they get more sophisticated about thinking of and executing such tasks, but is also because, as the fierce need to achieve their own internal goals grows stronger in their teen years, their willingness to do whatever it takes to make that happen also peaks. Acts of independence are important, developmentally, during this time, and are challenging for parents.
THE GO-TO LIST THAT COMES PREINSTALLED IN MOST CHILDREN
The interesting part is not that kids will try to persuade their parents, but more specifically how they try. First, there are the incredibly common psychological tactics that kids regularly use, because they work. Our children study us and learn very quickly what each parent or caregiver in their lives responds to.3 Is it sweetness? Negative behavior? Guilt? Once you are attuned to them, these tactics are neither subtle nor difficult to spot. This general list includes:4
•Charm
•Playing one parent off of the other
•Meltdowns
•Threats/anger/power-plays
•The guilt trip: “You love him more” or “I hate you!” or “I’m the only one who can’t”
•The promises for future behaviors (that may never happen): “If you let me do/get this thing I promise I will …”
Stories from Home: When my niece was around two and a half, we were at a little shop and she tried on some princess dress that was a crazy price, like $90. She asked her dad to buy it and he said, “I’m really sorry honey but we can’t afford it. It’s too expensive.” Without blinking an eye, she said, “Can Uncle Adam afford it?” I, of course, would have bought it but my brother refused to let me!
Note the charm, guilt, and the attempt at playing one adult off the other in this story, all from someone not yet three years old! The use of emotions is also a go-to for many children. From the early years with the meltdowns to the later years that can be filled with passionate arguments, kids do not shy away from giving it their all when it comes to their feelings.
Stories from Home: I’ll admit it … I bought the yellow toy dump truck after my son threw a fit in front of everyone at the store. He just would not stop with the “PLEEEEAAAAASSSSSSE MOMMYYYYYY …” so I eventually caved despite the fact that I thought it was overpriced and not even a good toy. He definitely manipulated me, and it worked.
Nearly every parent has a list of these memories at the ready, and they are relatively clear to identify when they happen. When children present you with any one of these tactics, you essentially have three choices (other than just giving in to the tactic). You could name the tactic out loud and make it clear that it won’t work, you could ignore the tactic (even if that requires walking away), or you can try to reframe the situation by reminding your child of the big-picture implications of this behavior.5
Here are a few stories from parents with ideas on options for how to handle them based on these three choices.
Parent #1: “When my daughter does something wrong, she likes to look down and say ‘I didn’t mean to’ even though she was clearly wrong and meant to. She likes to play up her innocence.”
Response options:
•Name it: You could say something like “Yes, you’re very charming, but that won’t get you off the hook.”
•Ignore it: You can completely ignore the tactic and punish the crime.
•Reframe it: You can remind her that taking responsibility for what you do is important in your family, and that her choice to avoid doing that will break your trust.
Parent #2: “Our kids will go to one of us, asking permission to go out with friends or something, and tell us that the other parent always says yes to this.”
Response options:
•Name it: You can call it out and make it clear that you always check with each other by saying, “Terrific—I’ll just text mom/dad to confirm.”
•Ignore it: You can ignore the alleged pressure from the other parent and make an independent decision.
•Reframe it: You could remind your children that their job is to respect your decision, regardless of what might happen under other circumstances or what someone else would decide.
Parent #3: “I asked my son to try his homework alone before I would help him. He kept sighing loudly and attempting to get my attention so I would help him and he wouldn’t have to do it all himself since he knows I don’t like to see him frustrated.”
Response options:
•Name it: You can tell him that you hear the sighs but that they won’t work to make you feel bad or to change your mind.
•Ignore it: You can leave the room so you won’t have to hear him at all.
•Reframe it: You can remind him that if he tries it on his own first in good faith, you’re always happy to help afterward.
The three responses of name it, ignore it, and reframe it are easy to reach for when you can clearly identify the tactic in the moment. But other tactics are more subtle, and we might not spot them as easily. Four of the most common tactics that kids (and adults) use are conformity pressures, using strategically contrasting offers, the exhaustion tactic, and lying. As the saying goes, forewarned is forearmed!
TACTIC #1: THE BUCK STOPS WHERE? CONFORMITY PRESSURES IN PARENTING
The idea of blaming someone else for an unpopular decision is as old as the hills. Car dealers do it (“I would love to give you this deal, but I checked with the manager and it can’t be done”), managers at work do it (“We just can’t go against the company policy”), and parents will sometimes use each other for this purpose (“You know I would let you but your father won’t allow it”). There’s a lot of solid sense behind this approach because it preserves the relationship while making sure that there’s still a line that won’t get crossed. It’s an easy and reasonable way out.
Kids have their own version of this tactic, and it’s called everyone else is doing it. This is similar to the “I would allow it but someone else won’t let us” version in that both are based on some external set of rules which must be respected regardless of what individual people might want to make happen, but in this version, the pressure from the outside is to comply instead of reject an idea. It works because we’re all very tuned in to what other people are doing in similar circumstances, especially as parents. For many years, your most valuable parenting resource has been other parents. Any gathering of parents comes with endless stories and discussions and questions that we rely on to know if what we’re experiencing at home is typical, to hear solutions from other parents to common problems, and to find out if we’re doing it “right.” It’s very uncomfortable to be the odd one out on a parenting decision. Nor do we want to deny our kids the experiences that others their age are enjoying. Kids themselves may be even more susceptible to this kind of social pressure, making their pleas and arguments particularly forceful.
Psychologists call this need to align with others the pressure of conformity. Studies on this topic show how extraordinarily willing people are to go along with a group’s observation or decision, even if the individual initially had a very different opinion. There is evidence that the brain actually changes its perception of the situation to fit what others are saying.6 Parenting is no exception. It feels much more comfortable to align with the cues from the outside world, especially if it seems that everyone else actually is doing it or allowing it, as opposed to standing alone and reinforcing a decision that you initially thought made more sense. Parents overwhelmingly report that the decision about getting a cell phone is one of the strongest moments for the “everyone else has one” type of logic in their home.
Stories from Home: Ohhh, the sweet iPhone issue. When we wanted to start our daughter off with a flip phone because we felt that it was unnecessary for her to have a device that’s so expensive and extensive, she freaked out on us, claiming that we were trying to make her feel less “loved” than others. It was quite a ridiculous show, but my wife gave in.
This isn’t to say, of course, that your own judgment and decisions can’t stand alone, just that it’s harder to feel comfortable with a decision if you feel like every other parent has made a different one. Being misaligned with the larger community around you is stressful.
Stories from Home: I am always struggling with my teenage daughter about what she is or isn’t allowed to wear. We live in a warm climate and many of the girls wear so little, but that’s not what I feel comfortable with. It’s a nonstop battle. I have to remind myself regularly that what I have decided is valid and stick to it, but it’s hard without any external support for my rules.
Key Point: Remind yourself that you don’t need to follow in the footsteps of others. You have the right to call out conformity for what it is and you don’t have to do what other people are doing. Situations are different, and you can stick to your own values. Also keep in mind that it’s rarely true that “everyone” is doing anything.
TACTIC #2: IT’S NOT AS BAD AS WHAT I COULD HAVE ASKED FOR! AND ITS TWIN: WHILE YOU’RE SAYING YES, HOW ABOUT JUST THIS ONE EXTRA LITTLE THING? THE USE OF CONTRASTS
By nature, human beings are very comparative. It’s hard to assess the value of something in isolation, so we naturally seek a point of comparison to gauge our reactions. These are called contrast effects, and they can be seen in many different areas. For example, as described centuries ago by philosopher John Locke, putting your hand into a bucket of room-temperature water will feel very different after having had your hand in either a bucket of ice water or a bucket of very hot water immediately prior. Similarly, stores know that a $33 shirt on sale for $20 feels like better value than the same shirt marked $19.99 in the first place, so they use higher prices and then offer discounts accordingly.7 Contrasts change the way we make value judgments every day, and there are three different types.
Door in the Face
Things seem more reasonable when compared to how much worse it could have been. For example, have you noticed that when you receive solicitations from charities in the mail, they often give you boxes to check for how much you’d like to donate that can sometimes go as high as $1000 or even $5000, when most people are very unlikely to give that much? They do that strategically, so that their actual targeted amount of only a $20 donation will seem like nothing much in comparison. Kids naturally absorb strategies like this one, and then they use them against us.
Stories from Home: When my son wanted a new gaming computer, he came to me with specs and prices for a really expensive model. When I said no, he came back to me with a much more modest (less expensive) one, which I said yes to. Much later he told me that he did this on purpose—he never expected to get the really expensive system but was using that as a way to make the second one seem more reasonable.
Parents can use these tactics as well, since it can be incredibly persuasive to show your willingness to concede from an otherwise harsh position. This can be done with respect to a threat (“You could be punished more severely, but I’m going to take it easy on you”) or a privilege (“Ordinarily you know that we don’t allow you to drive the nicer car, but for the big dance we’ll let you take it for the night”). On top of the joy of getting an even better deal than expected, these tactics also work because being generous makes the other person want to be generous too.
Reciprocity is the impulse to respond in kind to other people, and we have a very deep instinct to reflect the behavior of others back to them. If people are nice to us, we feel a very strong urge to be nice. Similarly, if someone treats us unfairly, we feel the pull to settle the score and offer the same kind of treatment back. In any type of negotiation, this pattern can often be seen with what is called reciprocal concessions. This means that when one side is willing to make a concession, the other side (to feel like a fair, good person) suddenly faces tremendous pressure to offer a similar concession. Even if the first concession was offered in an entirely strategic and calculated way, it can still work to make the other side want to also step up, concede something, and find common ground.
Stories from Home: When my daughter was ten years old, I can’t remember what she did, but she got grounded and was not allowed to see her friends. The next day, she asked to go sleepover at her friend’s house, and of course, I said no. She accepted this without a fuss. Three days later, she asked to go to another friend’s house for a sleepover, and I said yes because I decided that she had already served enough time and I didn’t want her to miss out on everything. After she got home from the sleepover, she told me there was no “first” sleepover, she just created that so I would be willing to say yes to what she really wanted.
This is a clear example of manipulation, but it worked because of the reciprocity effect. Having already politely conceded the first sleepover, the child was in a much better position to ask the mother to concede next and allow her to accept the second invitation.
Foot in the Door
This tactic starts with an initial request which is so small and innocuous that it is likely to get a yes, and once this has happened, it opens the door for yet further and bigger requests.
Stories from Home: My daughter once admitted to me that she had a particular approach she liked to use on me when asking for dessert. She would ask for something very small and reasonable, like one small cookie or a single piece of candy or gum. When that got a yes, she’d ask for a swap, like, “Actually, instead of that, can I have some ice cream?” She realized early on that I was much more likely to say yes to something small, and then was also much more likely to just give in to the thing she actually wanted once she already had my permission to have dessert at all!
A close cousin is the tactic called the nibble, which does the reverse and asks for the smaller thing at the end, after the basic deal has been agreed to. Think, for instance, of someone shopping for a big-ticket item, like a mattress, and asking for the salesperson to throw in a last-minute item, like a protective cover for the mattress, to “seal the deal.” This relies on the contrast between risking the whole deal versus the value of the last little thing, and can often sway the answer in your favor.
That’s Not All
Like the infomercials for which this tactic was named, offering more and more elements to an offer makes it more likely to get the yes. “Please can I go? I’ll clean my room. I’ll do extra chores. I’ll even be nice to my brother!” This is another version of a contrast effect because, as compared to the first offer, the later ones seem like much better deals.
Key Point: Offers made in negotiations are automatically compared to other points of reference. You can use this to your advantage by comparing your offer to a situation which would have been worse. You should also be careful about the slowly increasing requests coming at you.
TACTIC #3: WHAT IF I JUST KEEP ASKING? REALLY, I COULD DO THIS ALL DAY … THE EXHAUSTION TACTIC
So many people get their way by just not giving up on their requests. Eventually, they wear us down and get us to agree to whatever it was that we were resisting merely to get them to go away. This happens in the workplace with people who doggedly pursue their own ideas even in the face of disagreement from all sides. This is true at home as well, and kids are particularly adept at this exhaustion tactic. That is to say, they aren’t as sensitive to the possibility that they are being rude by asking the same question over and over again, especially at home.
Stories from Home: I ended up getting a violent video game for my son. I caved in because it was a constant struggle for over a month, and I just couldn’t keep arguing about it.
As this example shows, kids get reinforced for this tactic because more often than we’d like to admit, it works for them. We do cave and say yes, giving in against our better judgment to take away the pain of the incessant nagging. And like any situation in which rewards are offered occasionally, it makes the behavior incredibly strong and persistent. This is called intermittent reinforcement in psychology, and means that when people don’t know whether a reward is coming or not after a particular behavior, it is much more addictive than a predictable cause-and-effect situation.8 If you never, not even once, said yes after you’d initially said no, kids would not be tempted to keep asking just in case. But if they feel that at any moment you might crack and concede, they are motivated to keep asking into eternity because you never know, the reward might come the next time! This is the logic behind sleep training and the advice to never pick up your baby in the night. If you ever give in and go pick them up, the next time they may just cry all night because there’s no reason to think you won’t come in any minute now.
The child who asks you over and over again for permission to stay up late, or go to a particular party, or get that video game, is really just testing your cause-and-effect system. Does no really mean no? Does it mean no forever or does it only mean no for that one time that I asked? If you changed your mind the last time I asked a lot of times, doesn’t that mean there’s always a chance that you will change your mind again? Add this to the fact that there is very little consequence to the child for annoying the parent with repeated requests, and you can see why this is such a dominant strategy for children at all stages.
While in theory, the simple cure is to always hold your ground, in reality, this is not always practical. What if you back yourself into a corner, and you wish you could now say yes to something that you initially said no to? Sometimes, we do say no too quickly. After a ridiculous amount of pushback from the child, you realize that this whatever-it-is is actually truly important to your child, and not that important to you. If you could do it all over again, you would concede the point in the first place, but how can you possibly do that now without losing all credibility forever afterward, and reinforcing the bad behavior of asking and asking and asking? This is a tricky moment.
You can, of course, just choose to give in anyway, while explaining that this does not mean that this will work every time, but that’s not an entirely comfortable thing to do. You can also try to find a different thing to offer, or a compromise of sorts. Whatever you choose to do, it’s better if it comes with a clear explanation for your reversal. “Okay fine! You can have it!” is a much more problematic stance in the long run than “I see now that this seems really important to you. I had a reason for thinking it was a bad idea, but maybe we can find a solution that works for both of us. Next time, tell me upfront if something is very important, and why.”
Kids can understand that if they beg and beg over every little thing, you won’t be able to tell when something is actually more important to them and will tune them out more often. You want to give them the tools to express their interests (their “why”) in a better way than through this wear-you-down tactic.
Key Point: Encourage your children to prioritize their needs and make it clear to you which (small number of) things are more important than others. Everything may feel important to them in the moment, but they are not the same amount of important.
Lying is the ultimate manipulator. Very young children may be defiant, but they are not yet able to lie. The ability to state something false, to mislead another person into thinking something is true when it isn’t, actually requires a fair amount of cognitive development and begins emerging around age four. At this point, children begin to understand that other people have a different perception of the world than their own, and one that is not necessarily objectively verifiable.9 Consider the five-year-old who answers “yes” when asked if they had washed their hands, when in fact they hadn’t. A younger child assumes that the parent already knows the truth, and so doesn’t think to report it otherwise. But the five-year-old has become aware that the parent is relying on them for the answer, and doesn’t have the ability to automatically know the truth without this report. This provides an opportunity for them to play with the truth and control what the parent thinks and believes. This is a heady sense of power for kids at this age, and many of them try it out. Fortunately, these early attempts tend to be both pretty transparent and relatively harmless.
By about age seven, the moral implications that accompany the decision to lie start to become clearer to kids, and through it, they become more sophisticated about the decision to lie. For example, children at these ages can understand that sometimes a lie is the kinder thing to do, as opposed to telling the blunt truth in all situations. This is also influenced by cultural expectations, as seen in the experiment that showed that Chinese children were more likely to lie to be self-effacing (“No, it wasn’t me who picked up all the trash in the park”) than were Canadian children, who were instead more likely to lie to help a friend get what they needed.10
Older children may lie with more intent, to avoid negative consequences or to get what they want for themselves.
Stories from Home: When my son was in middle school, he started to have girlfriends but didn’t tell us about them. Instead, he began asking for a lot of money, and told us that it was for school fees and lunches. I found out later he was using all that money to date.
For most, this behavior is limited and doesn’t become pervasive, but there are those for whom lying is habit-forming, or who use it to shield information about dangerous behavior, in which case more serious attention is needed.11 Lying behavior is surprisingly stubborn in the face of punishment. In fact, one study showed that the harsher the punishment, the more lying kids tended to engage in going forward, and the better they got at it!12 Neuroscientific studies have shown that the brain gets desensitized to the discomfort of lying very quickly. That is, the more you lie, the easier it becomes to keep lying, and even to escalate the lies to bigger and more serious topics.13
We’re not very good lie detectors on the whole. Lies are particularly hard to root out, in part because people don’t spend their time questioning the truth of the information they encounter all day long. This is called the liar’s advantage.14 We also mistakenly think that there will be telltale nonverbal cues that come along with lies—people shifting their gaze, or squirming, or altering their speech patterns—when, in fact, none of these are reliable indicators of deception.15
You may know your own young child well enough to know what behaviors emerge when lies are told (their “tells”), but these signs usually disappear quickly and then all we have are the words themselves. We can try direct questioning to get at the truth. We can look for inconsistencies in a story. Or, we can search for objective evidence outside of what’s being reported. There’s even some research that shows that you can bribe your kids with cash to get them to tell the truth16 (some lying behavior is based on a weighing of the potential costs and benefits, so a cash payment can tip the balance in favor of the truth!), but this doesn’t seem practical in the long term. While preventing lying (or curtailing it early on) is always advisable, it isn’t always realistic.
But lying can be discouraged. Three methods seem particularly useful in promoting honesty in your children:17
•Praise honesty and signal its value in your home. The positive fable about George Washington admitting to cutting down the cherry tree has a much greater impact than the negative warning about the boy who cried wolf by lying too many times and losing the trust of those around him. Older kids don’t need the stories, but they do still need you to communicate regularly about your values and to point out examples of the behaviors that you appreciate.
•Make honesty an explicit expectation by asking your children to commit to being honest. In many studies across contexts, asking for “honor code” commitments increases compliance and decreases negative behaviors (including both cheating and lying) by significant amounts.
•Discuss the big-picture consequences of lying, both in terms of the risks to the relationships as well as in the actual situation itself.
Key Point: Honesty and lying should be topics of conversation around your house, not just when the kids are little but throughout their lives. Direct reinforcement of your values helps to keep them from slipping down into habitual lying.
•Kids have a lot of tricks up their sleeves. They have spent their lives analyzing what will get them what they want from you. Stay on top of the most common ones (everything from guilt trips to meltdowns to “everyone else is doing it” to “I can just keep asking all day”) by first noticing it and then either choosing to comment on it, ignore it, or change the way the conversation is happening.
•Kids are goal-driven. Remember that more so than manipulating you consciously, most of the time kids are just trying to figure out how to get what they want without truly considering your side of the situation at all. Learning to appreciate and care about the other person’s perspective is part of growing up.
•We compare offers to assess value. It’s really difficult to evaluate an offer in isolation, so we naturally tend to compare it with other points of reference. This can be used strategically, as when a more extreme request is followed by a more modest one. If you become comfortable with the logic of contrasts, you can notice when your kids use it, as well as use it yourself to make your own offers in a negotiation more appealing.
•Assess each situation uniquely. Many acts of persuasion are based on the pressure to be consistent, either with our own previous decisions or with what others have decided. It takes an extra moment of thought to realize why this particular situation might be different, but it can release you from this potential trap.
•Explicit reminders help prevent lying. It’s important to talk about honesty throughout your child’s life to make it clear that this is a value in your family. Research shows that this is a better approach than punishing lies.
NOTES
1. Palan, K. M. & Wilkes, R. E. (1997). Adolescent–parent interaction in family decision making. Journal of Consumer Research, 24(2), 159–169. doi: 10.1086/209501.
2. Sandy, S. V. (2006). The development of conflict resolution skills: Preschool to adulthood. In M. Deutsch, P. T. Coleman, & E. C. Marcus (Eds.), The handbook of conflict resolution: Theory and practice (2nd ed.; ch. 16; pp. 356–388). San Francisco, CA: Jossey–Bass.
3. Lehman, J. (2017). Masters of manipulation: How kids control you with behavior. https://www.empoweringparents.com/article/masters-of-manipulation-how-kids-control-you-with-behavior/.
4. Pincus, D. (2017). Manipulative child behavior? My kids are “too smart for their own good.” https://www.empoweringparents.com/article/manipulative-child-behavior-my-kids-are-too-smart-for-their-own-good/.
5. Lewicki, R. J., Barry, B., & Saunders, D. M. (2016). Essentials of negotiation (6th ed.). New York: McGraw–Hill Education.
6. Stallen, M., & Sanfey, A. G. (2015). The neuroscience of social conformity: Implications for fundamental and applied research. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 9, 337. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2015.00337.
7. Chernev, A. (2012, May 29). Can there ever be a fair price? Why JC Penney’s strategy backfired. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2012/05/can-there-ever-be-a-fair-price.
8. Miltenberger, R. G. (2012). Behavior modification: Principles and procedures. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning.
9. Rhodes, M. (2017, October 2). When children begin to lie, there’s actually a positive takeaway. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2017/10/02/552860553/when-children-begin-to-lie-theres-actually-a-positive-takeaway.
10. Cameron, C. A., Lau, C., Fu, G., & Lee, K. (2012). Development of children’s moral evaluations of modesty and self-promotion in diverse cultural settings. Journal of Moral Education, 41, 61–78.
11. American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (2017, July). Lying and children. https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Families/FFF-Guide/Children-And-Lying-044.aspx.
12. Talwar, V., & Lee, K. (2011). A punitive environment fosters children’s dishonesty: A natural experiment. Child Development, 82(6), 1751–1758. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01663.x.
13. Garrett, N., Lazzaro, S.C., Ariely, D., & Sharot, T. (2016). The brain adapts to dishonesty. Nature Neuroscience, 19, 1727–1732. doi: 10.1038/nn.4426.
14. Feldman, R. (2010). The liar in your life: The way to truthful relationships. New York: Hachette Book Group.
15. Sporer, S., & Schwandt, B. (2007). Moderators of nonverbal indicators of deception: A meta-analytic synthesis. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 13(1), 1–34.
16. Stone, A. (2018, January 5). Is your child lying to you? That’s good. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/05/opinion/sunday/children-lying-intelligence.html.
17. Stone, A. (2018, January 5). Is your child lying to you? That’s good. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/05/opinion/sunday/children-lying-intelligence.html.