As tall as three apples, they lie as they breathe… But why do adults overreact to these treasures of imagination?
Lately, when I ask my 4-year-old son what he did at school, he tells me every other time out of the blue stories. He fought with a dinosaur or saved his teacher who was about to be eaten by a lion… », relates Emma, Jules’ mother. “Lies” so huge that we want to laugh more. But should we laugh at them, pretend to believe them, be offended, scold in some cases? It would seem that it is the reactions of the parents that say a lot, rather than the little or big lies of the 2-6 year-olds.
A beautiful imagination
Moreover, it is more often a pseudo-lie, where reality mixes with imagination and magical thinking. “It is also generously fueled by the stories we tell them, the tooth fairy or Santa Claus,” smiles Carine Simonet1, psychotherapist. However, for a young child, inventing stories is also testing the power of the words they are beginning to master, having fun with the reaction they provoke in adults, asserting themselves…” It is all the less of a lie since, “very schematically, a toddler thinks that we can read their thoughts,” adds Marine Manard2, neuropsychologist. Then, as they grow up, they realize that this is not the case and multiply the experiments to test the perspicacity of their interlocutors (“If I say that, does he believe me or not?”), which leads to an explosion of…
- Femina.fr
