<p>We take a journey from the trainer-wheels fibs of toddlers through to our peak period of dishonesty - the teen years - with a child psychotherapist and a family counsellor. </p><p>We take a journey from the trainer-wheels fibs of toddlers through to our peak period of dishonesty - the teen years - with a child psychotherapist and a family counsellor. </p><p><strong>Duncan Smith: As a child, I was a prodigious liar</strong></p><p>&quot;We lie because we are reinforced for doing so&quot; - Marc Wilson, Professor of Psychology, Victoria University</p><p>As a child lying seemed to come easily, naturally. Whether my lies were told to impress gullible schoolmates or to deceive trusting parents, they sprang freely from my lips.</p><p>I remember, aged seven and we shifted from Ranfurly, a small Central Otago village to the bustling metropolis of mid-sixties Hamilton.</p><p>My reading level was very poor for my age and to remedy this I was put into primer one to get the basics skills under my belt.</p><p>Being a &#x27;big seven year&#x27; old placed in a class alongside all these &#x27;little five year olds&#x27; I felt out of place and deeply humiliated.</p><p>I was super motivated by the humiliation and worked like a Trojan to improve my reading.</p><p>The first day of the next term I was put back into a class with kids my own age - a huge relief but also a major challenge.</p><p>Most of my classmates knew each other well, many had been in kindergarten together. I felt like a real outsider.</p><p>Having been blessed (or cursed) with a fertile imagination I soon found I could exploit their complete lack of knowledge about my past by filling it out with colourful anecdotes - lies.</p><p>I told tall tales about living on a high country station, riding a palomino horse and mustering amongst the snow-capped mountains. I claimed expertise in trout fishing, duck shooting and deer stalking. And I was a crack shot with a 303!</p><p>The truth, of course, was much more mundane. Did my classmates believe me and my tall (macho) tales? It&#x27;s hard from this distance to gauge what they thought.</p><p>Lying certainly helped me create an identity (albeit false) for myself and fed or at least comforted my ego, so bruised by the demotion to primer one.</p><p>What strikes me about this now is how naturally I fell upon this lying behaviour to improve my lot.</p><p>Our society is held together not just by a shared commitment to truth but also by the understanding that we all lie to each other.</p><p>Lies get really bad press and sometimes of course lies and lying are hugely destructive and profoundly evil. There are times though when we really don&#x27;t want to hear the truth, where a lie is the kindest, most helpful offering we can make.</p><p><a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/pants-on-fire?share=elf_audio_2018621593">Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details</a></p>