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this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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Parenting
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Yeah, I'm gonna call BS. Trying to call anything "deception" by someone without a theory of mind is just nonsensical.
Children that young don't yet have the mental model to do anything like deceiving folks. They have enough trouble learning how the world works.
It’s a very similar pattern to dogs, which deceive their carers by mimicking human reactions and triggering empathy :)
I understand what you mean and for sure they don’t premeditate actions, but they do it nonetheless
Idk, IMHO, that's stretching the definition for "deception" a bit too wide.
Guess you don't have kids yet! By 18 months most kids are scooting around the house on their own two feet, but they can't talk very well. They can totally hide things if they think they're about to get told off though.
Meeep, wrong. My child is older than 18 months and doesn't "deceive" me. How could they lie, if they still try to figure out that whole language business? I'm not "telling them off", though, so maybe they don't develop some kind of weird mitigation strategy.
That whole narrative reeks of that "babies are tyrants that need to be taught how to be proper people" bullshit.
And asking parents about the behaviour of their children is anything, but proper developmental science.