Another developmental spurt

[rebeccapaul]

Some time in the last few months, Jonah has developed the capacity to deceive. I'm sure this is an important skill to have (especially if he goes into politics), but it is not my favorite skill

Comments

[irilyth]

Juniper has for a while not liked to admit when something is wrong, but she's old enough now (two and a half) that it starts to feel more like lying. We try to talk about things that make her unhappy, or that make me unhappy, but she seems to prefer denial as a strategy -- saying "no no no I didn't have a bonk!" (if she's hurt herself) or "no no no I didn't throw water" (tonight, when she threw a cup of water out of the bathtub and I took the cup away, after I'd already told her not to -- she didn't do it maliciously, she was just being happy and crazy and careless). And she understands the idea of tricking and being tricked and being tricky; we're trying to bang pretty hard on the idea that people sometimes say things that aren't true because it's funny, and then they laugh and say "no, really", like if I say "mmmm, I want to eat a delicious Junie nose!" And she totally gets that and thinks it's fun and funny, so that seems good. I imagine it'll all change, several times, as she gets older. :^) Anyway, good luck working through it with Jonah.

[sildra]

I remember with my brother especially it was hard to tell when he made the transition was between hiding and lying, and also between warping his perception of reality to fit what he thought it should be and understanding reality but just lying about it. It didn't help that at 2 1/2, when he was approximately making those transitions, he could barely speak yet (he was one of those kids who suddenly went from not speaking to speaking in full sentences sometime when he was between 2 1/2 and 3, which isn't too surprising/uncommon for a youngest child in a big family, but it made it hard to tell whether or not he understood certain nuances for a while).

I only vaguely remember, but when I was about Juniper's age I totally did the thing of denying anything if I thought it would make my parents unhappy, even when it was really obvious and/or I'd been caught in the act. Among other more minor things, I once gave my sister a haircut (just a little before I turned 3), and when she went screaming to my parents I denied that her hair had even been cut, let alone that I did it--and then changed the story to that she'd done it, even though she didn't have the motor skills yet, and then that I'd done it but it had been consensual--all while standing in a pile of hair trimmings and utterly failing to hide a pair of brightly-colored safety scissors behind my back. What really made a lasting impression on me, though--and this is why I remember going through this phase--is being punished for really minor things or even accidents and being told I wouldn't have been punished at all if I'd come clean in the first place rather than lying about it. (And then trying not lying and discovering it was true, I wasn't punished.)