Whoops! You’re actually teaching your kid to lie

These parents need a time out.

A new series of experiments has shown that ScienceAlert.com reported.

They study’s authors, whose work was published in the Journal of Moral Education, found that many kids have been indirectly taught by their parents that fibbing is a lesser risk than being truthful in uncomfortable situations.

Researchers had 142 parents watch a series of eight videos that placed a child actor in various scenarios where kids had been prompted to answer questions asked by their caregiver.

One example was a child being asked to give up the location of their sister who was in trouble — and also apparently hiding beneath their house.

The bluntly truthful version had the kid admit, “She’s under the porch” — whereas the liar-liar-pants-on-fire said, “She went to the library.”

However, more subtle responses to the question had also been recorded. The dishonest version had the child answer, “I think she might have gone to bed or something,” and the truthful one had the reply: “I think she might be outside.”

Another instance had showed a child lying simply to be polite in lieu of ratting out a sibling.

Parents were then asked to rate the child’s trustworthiness, kindness, good behavior, competency, likeability, friendliness, intelligence, honesty and their overall warmth. There were bonus points for whether or not they plainly felt like the kid was good in nature as well.

While lying — especially to protect a sibling — was received negatively overall by the adults in the study, the instances of courteous dishonesty were more tolerated.

Those kids were likely to be rewarded more than the polite-but-honest children.

“Although cultural mores dictate that lying is a negative behavior, a much more nuanced message is likely communicated to children engaging in prosocial lie-telling,” the authors wrote.

“While brutal honesty might elicit dislike, it may also engender a perception that the individual can be trusted — that one offering such a blunt assessment must be honest.”