what 1st story teach us

In 1st story,shepherd boy ends with ultimate punishment.

     
      Punishment.... How many times we use this word.

"don't do this,or god will punish you."

      "Stop doing this or I will tell dad and he will punish you"


Not only at home but also in school,if something goes wrong it will lead to punishment.
And this need not to be actual punishment. Think only about the word,the threat we show them.Yes ...we use it often.

       So what I mean is punishment not a news to kids.it is day today's affair for them.they heard this quite often.

        If we ask 5 year old is lying wrong?.92% of them ends up saying yes.And if you ask them why?,they end up saying cause is give you punishment.

     Punishment that hurts him.when young kid lie,they risk this process by considering their own self protection.

     If they are safe,if its not causing any harm to themselves then they are OK with them.

   It takes years for kids to understand lying on moral ground.
They don't know anything about destroying trust after lying or carrying guilt of lying.

As I told you kids are smart to know that if I lie,they will punish me..
More than this they are smart enough to know,if I lie and get caught then only they can punish me.

So these sharp little minds start to think about lying to avoid punishment.They think if I can convince others that I m not lying then they will not punish me.so if I lie better they don't caught me after lying and I will be safe...win ,win!!!

So threat of punishments makes them hyper aware of personal cost and they start lying better.As they are engage in saving themselves from punishment,they become better liars.

And also this distract them from learning how lies impact others.
So  increasing threat of punishment not going to teach our kids to lie less..
think mama think

george washington and the cherry tree

Today we will discuss second story the George and the cherry tree

 




This story reduced lying in 75% of boys and 50% girls
 Now its obvious that we think this story work coz it has national icon in it.That kids are following the honesty of nations founder.

 To clear these counts researchers reran the experiment. They replaced George with non descript character means with ordinary boy.And they kept remaining story intact.

 For our surprise ,this version of story(without Washington) had the same result This generic story also reduced lying in kids.

 Why this is so? In fact, in first story,we got perfect entertainment. Kids love animals,trees,sheeps, wolf forest etc.This type of stories kids usually like to hear.they jump,they laugh,they scared.... But they don't teach them anything what we want them to(in this case,honesty)

 As we see second story or its generic version lacks all entertainment.

Usually if u ask kids "which story u will like to hear?".90 out of 100 will say the boy who cried wolf.

 Then why 1 story work so well while other doesn't?and what it tell us about lying in kids?

Think mama think

The boy who cried wolf

As I mentioned in this post this post ,lets find out what happened to researchers poll.
      In their poll,75% of people said The boy who cried wolf  work better
      But the truth is this story did not cut down lying at all.in fact,kids lie little more than usual

      In a beautiful way we used to cuddle up with our grandparents.. With sleepy eyes when we heard that story, we ensured our heart not to lie,otherwise god will punish us.
      Isn't it shocking to know that this ancient fable actually OK increase lying
       Do you thinking what I m thinking?...were we dumb,or so called obedient to believe in our elders and followed them as they want us to?
       Or,today's kids are smart and sharp than us?

 Oh,boy..they are.no doubt in this.Each and every mom will nod with  YES with this.

        YUP...every kid is sharp and smart today.Smart enough to ask questions back, sharp enough to deny what they don't believe... And most importantly smart and sharp enough to think

Now,what's with second story George and cherry tree.

This story reduces lies in75% boys and 50% girls

Why this happened?

Think mama think.....

         

why kids lie

Now a days,I m reading a book 'NURTURESHOCK'  which is based on a researches on kids behavior. One of the good elaborated topic is lie.(don't worry ,we are safe here).they give us insight about why kids lie.

                   

Before that,let me tell you 2 stories(yeee...story
 time).These stories they used to reduce the lying in children.

 Let us see now

1.The boy who cried wolf:

       The version in which both the boys and sheep get eaten because of their repeated lies. And another one is,

2.George Washington and the cherry tree:

        In which George confesses to his father that he chopped down the prized tree with his new hatchet.The story ends with his fathers reply "George, I'm glad that you cut down that cherry tree after all.Hearing you tell the truth is better than if I had a thousand cherry trees."

        

        After this,researchers took a poll,

   Now its your time,

         Tell me,if you had to guess,which story would you think reduced lying more?   

Think mama think