Lying...

[Shades]

Is lying - here I mean the concept of understanding that we can tell someone something that isn't true, and have them not know that it isn't - a learned understanding or a developmental thing? If toddlers never saw people say things that they knew not to be true, and saw people believe those things - would it occur to them to do it? Or does it come with the understanding that mummy etc doesn't know everything in terms of where the veggies went that she thought I ate but I'm actually sitting on? Just pondering.

[deletedit]

But the lies are so funny! Ours has just started lying constantly. She blames her little brother for *everything*. That little brother gets up to some amazing antics.

Biggest one doesn't lie so much as she phrases things in really weird convoluted ways and she is really hard to understand, so we think she's saying the opposite of what she is. I've never seen a child answer yes/no questions with a novel the way she does, even if the question is "do you want lollies".