I bet parents/adults would fail the "peeking game" even faster than the kids. It would be difficult to construct such an experiment, though.

Lying is required to get by: full honesty isn't helpful, and I'd go as far as to say it is actively a hindrance.

As concerned as parents are about kids lying to us/them, apparently we're not so concerned about parents lying to kids.

heh. I've worked with kids a good deal, and that is a personal pleasure of mine. I don't ever pull the ones that are meant to intentionally scare (such as "the police will come if you don't stop crying") but I love the ones where you can see their brains working and deciding that no, that's probably improbable, I'm probably just teasing. (Always done while watching the kid to see if they get the joke; some kids really don't).

My brother likes to tell people I've scarred him because I made up stories all the time. I had a watch with a castle on it, and I told him (he's six years younger) that there was a prince fairy that lived in the castle in my watch ... the reflected light from the glass made a light on the ceiling, usually of the car.
My brother asked my mom later why she never stopped me: she said, "It kept you quiet and made you happy. No big problem there."

Score 1 for big lying sister.

I told our daughter about Falling Rock, the missing Indian Princess whose father still has signs along all the mountain passes and highways. She believed me for the longest time. I come by it naturally, my dad was a big jokester. My sister Lori had me convinced that she wrote the song My Favorite Things, and my sister Barbara scared the **** out of me with the hand that wouldn't die.

My brother lied to me to get what he wanted. used to tell me chili was made of dead presidents so he could eat my bowl, and told me if the house wasn't clean cps would take us away.

That second one might have a grain of truth to it.

With false praise comes ego. Self-esteem cannot be instilled, you have to earn it, hence the 'self' portion of the concept.

After discovering the littlest brother had been getting me the big sis and the middle bro to do a bunch of things as well as all of his chores by saying 'well, mom said, guys, you have to!', we convinced him that he was really the 4th kid in the family and that our other brother Tim was shipped away for lying and that a similar fate awaited him since he'd been lying to us for so long.

I got in big trouble for that one, but it was worth it.

I have to say, that as a kid, and the baby of the family (7 and 10 years younger than my older sisters), I was more or less relentlessly "lied to" (most often in the guise of "kidding"). This created a grievous mistrust issue between us that continues to this day.

Now, we siblings are soon facing "Last Will and Testament" issues with our parents, and believe me when I say those experiences have not gone unforgotten.

Which I consider a damned shame.