Parents, here's why you should be glad that your kids are lying to you

Children who lie early in their life tend to have much better cognitive abilities, a study claims. And while we do believe that honesty is the best policy, this study claims that kids who start lying at an early age are probably more intelligent than those who do not. “As parents and teachers — and society as a whole — we always worry that if a kid lies, there will be terrible consequences,” said Kang Lee from the University of Toronto in Canada. “But it turns out there is a big difference between kids who lie earlier and those who lie later. The kids who lie earlier tend to have much better cognitive abilities,” Lee said.

As part of the study, which has been published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, the researchers conducted tests to measure executive function, including self-control and “theory of mind” — the capacity to understand another person’s intentions and beliefs. The kids who were taught deception outperformed the control group. “With just a few days of instruction, young children quickly learned to deceive and gained immediate cognitive benefits from doing so,” the researchers said. “These findings support the idea that even seemingly negative human social behaviours may confer cognitive benefits when such behaviours call for goal pursuing, problem-solving, mental state tracking, and perspective taking,” they said.

However, this study in no way encourages kids to start lying and you as parents shouldn't either.