Show me the child at seven and I will show you the man. The quip, sometimes attributed to Greek philosopher Aristotle, sometimes to Saint Ignatius of Loyola, is often regurgitated as a truism when a youngster, for good or for bad, displays noteworthy traits.
So for some parents, a child who makes things up and refuses to give honest answers should be a worry.
But when it comes to a youngster with a penchant for lies, he or she is not necessarily headed in the wrong direction in life, according to researchers at McGill University in Canada, Université de Montréal and John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
“Most childhood lying does not lead to serious problems in adulthood, and only certain kinds of lying behaviour is associated with later psychological or legal issues,” the team found, following a study of around 3,000 people who were schoolgoers in Quebec in the mid-1980s.
In a paper published in the journal Development and Psychopathology in May, the team reported that “the most common trajectories” indicated “stability” as well as “declining reports of lie-telling over time.”
But at the same time, children who were inclined to economize on truth did in some cases “show early aggression and impulsivity” ahead of being more likely to “show anti-social personality symptoms and have criminal convictions” as they passed from adolescence to adulthood.
“Children do not all follow the same developmental pattern of lying,” said McGill’s Victoria Talwar.
While the occasional fib is to be expected from a child, and is probably harmless, what Talwar described as “persistent and increasing lying across time – especially when in combo with aggression and impulsivity” could be a sign that a child needs support and not just discipline.