6 hours ago
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N. Raghuraman, Management Guru
“Mommy’s lying, I’m three years old, we just cut out three candles.” The child innocently said this when his mother told an Airport Authority of India (AAI) employee, ‘Two years.’
AAI has deployed this staff to ensure that children above two years of age do not play in the designated play zone in the departure area of the ground floor of Udaipur Airport. He asked the child to go out, because the child himself had said that he was three years old. The father came running from the coffee shop opposite and asked ‘What happened?’
The mother said, ‘Our child was punished for honesty. How to explain to this person that the third birthday means that the child is just two years old. The father went to the employee and argued but without success.
The child kept saying to the mother, ‘I did not tell any lie, then why did that uncle ask me to go away? I will ask Grandfather to send the crow that bites those who lie. Due to lack of children below two years of age, the game zone at the airport remained empty most of the time and the AAI staff was busy expelling all children above two years of age from that zone. Some parents would definitely struggle and be successful in getting their child admitted there.
On Tuesday itself, Udaipur Airport had reduced the age limit from three years to two years, because most of the parents lie about the age of the children and get the children entered in the zone. The staff acknowledged that children themselves expose parents and we ask them to move away, as older children sometimes inadvertently injure children under two years of age while playing with them.
Interestingly, on a board installed in the game zone, parents have been advised to stay with their children and take care of them. In such a situation, how can older children hurt younger children? Another interesting thing is that a full-time employee stays near the zone in all three shifts to prevent children above two years of age from entering there.
However, the point is not that children are entering this zone. The bigger issue is that when on one hand parents advise their children not to lie and on the other hand they themselves publicly lie about their children’s age, then by doing so they are destroying the trust that is growing in that young mind. Let’s kill.
Gradually the child starts believing that the crow does not bite when the mother lies, hence it will not bite me either. I can lie for ages. Instructing the child to answer the doorbell or a landline phone call and telling him or her to say, “Daddy isn’t home,” on the surface seems like a harmless lie.
But this creates a foundation in the child’s mind that society does not care about small lies. The child then counts the categories of lies. He tries to separate good lies from bad lies but gets confused as he sees lies lie to parents, bus conductors, water park ticketing staff and many other places and gradually the lying becomes his too. It becomes a habit.
This has other consequences too, like the lie told collectively by all the parents at Udaipur airport had kept that three-year-old truth-filled child away from the game zone. That too was probably a harmless lie, but it affected the right to play for many three-year-olds. I feel sad for them.
The bottom line is that At least when children are around, do not divide lies into harmful or less harmful. This will lay a wrong foundation in the tender mind of that child, which will be very harmful for his entire life.
