Little kids are constantly told never to lie, only to tell the truth. However, these tidbits of advice are instructed by their hypocritical, lying parents and teachers. Of course, these authority figures only tell “white” lies to “protect” children, right?
Parents go out of their way to protect their kids from all the harm, danger, and reality of the real world. The stork brought you to our doorstep! Mommy and Daddy are taking a little nap, go watch TV. These little white lies are fine early on, but after the first fifth grade sexual education class comes around, parents are forced to drop the convoluted stories. The old, “eat your veggies and you’ll grow big and strong,” is generally not enough to get junior to eat his Brussels sprouts, but it’s definitely worth a shot. The same principle applies when telling Spongebob addicts the TV is broken and hoping they have no idea there’s a big button on the monitor that will turn on their favorite talking sponge.
Teachers are supposed to be the know-all, wealth of knowledge that kids willingly respect and trust. In elementary school, however, they give kids false information, often about things they’ll have to re-learn later in life. Christopher Columbus was the greatest man on the planet, he founded our country – he has a holiday named after him, for goodness sake, he must be great! Teachers tell kids Columbus was the first person who found the Americas by sailing the ocean blue, the first to disprove the common belief that the earth was flat.
Each of these statements is false, though. Columbus inadvertently found the Americas after other explorers had been here and Native Americans were already living here, and the idea that the earth was flat was disproved long before Columbus set sail. He wasn’t the hero elementary school teachers paint him to be; he exploited both the land of the Americas and the natives as slaves, brought over a deadly disease that killed off a majority of the native people, and took the credit for a previously proved theory (danielnpaul.com).
The most common lies parents tell their kids are those about holidays. Kids just aren’t smart enough when they’re young to realize that a fat man squeezing down every chimney in the world to deliver presents, free of charge, is outrageous. A giant bunny jumping around from house to house hiding eggs and setting out Easter baskets is another one kids love to believe. When they’re young, these myths get kids to go to bed early and behave in order to get presents. “I think it’s good to tell kids Santa Clause is real so they have something to believe in,” said Junior Riri Shibata. Holiday lies are some of the ones that simply preserve youth. However, parents must be careful in their deceptions. “[My parents] told me Santa Clause was real, but I woke up one morning and they were putting presents under the tree,” said Senior Trent Jacobs. Real indeed.
Most of the lies parents tell their kids, the benefits of vegetables, broken TVs, Santa Clause, and the Easter Bunny, are harmless and are said only to protect. The ones about sex may be alright when children are young, but should be explained before sex-ed. The lies told in schools, though, are arbitrary and useless, and only have to be refuted later on in life. Whether parents choose to lie to their children is up to them, but they need to remember their kids live in the golden age of Google.