Should parents be concerned about children who cheat at board games or backyard sport? Is it normal and what does it mean for their future?
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00:00I think when we're talking about cheating with children,
00:04we're talking about attempting to gain an advantage by deceptive means.
00:09So, you know, moving pieces at Monopoly,
00:12taking the money without people seeing, you know,
00:15and this is something that children start to do from pre-school,
00:17really, where they start to learn that, actually, I could probably,
00:21if I can trick somebody else, I can get a better outcome for myself.
00:25Yeah. In your research, what are the objectives, then, of cheating?
00:28Is it purely personal, achieving more?
00:32It's either to achieve more or to avoid a negative outcome.
00:37So, if we think about board games, you know, children like to win.
00:40There's a bit of a dopamine hit when they win,
00:42so that's really attractive.
00:44But if we think about a school context,
00:46then very often it might not be to get the A,
00:49it might be, actually, I'm really worried that I'm going to fail,
00:51and so if I cheat, then I might avoid that negative outcome.
00:54How common is it, Fanny?
00:58It's a difficult question to answer.
00:59So, if we're looking at, you know, do children cheat,
01:02does my children cheat, the answer is almost certainly yes,
01:05at least at some point in their development.
01:07So, younger children will nearly always attempt to cheat
01:10in a range of different circumstances.
01:12As children get older, they start to become a lot more considered
01:15about when they cheat and when they might not,
01:17and it starts to matter more about, you know, am I a good person?
01:20I know I'm not supposed to do that.
01:23But we do start to see cheating in school escalate
01:25as children move towards adolescence,
01:27so the temptation to cheat becomes greater for particular things
01:31because of the pressures of schooling as well.
01:34That strikes me, as they're progressing through cheating,
01:38if you like, they are actually acquiring new observation skills
01:41about themselves, their peers, their parents, their teachers.
01:44Absolutely.
01:46You know, to be effective at cheating,
01:48you need some developmental skills,
01:50so you need to understand what somebody else is thinking
01:53in order to be able to trick them into, you know,
01:56you being successful at the cheating activity.
01:58You also need some, I guess, there's some brain power
02:01in being able to hang on to a false story or a lie, in a sense, over time.
02:06And so to be successful at cheating and to, you know,
02:08be able to maintain that story,
02:10you've actually got a few different cognitive skills
02:12that are developing and that are coming into play at once.
02:16When does the risk of getting caught play heavily?
02:20Well, I think, I mean, for a child, it probably plays heavily
02:24almost from the moment they start cheating.
02:25You know, the temptation is what drives cheating.
02:28The risk of being caught is what can sort of pull it back again.
02:32But I think where we'd be concerned for children
02:34might be where those stakes get higher.
02:36So, you know, if you cheat on a test and you're at risk of failing
02:38or you're at risk of being sort of, you know,
02:41facing particular negative consequences,
02:44that gets more serious as you move through your schooling.
02:47Where you start to cheat, obviously, in the adult world,
02:50you know, that can put you at risk of unemployment,
02:51it can put you at risk of incarceration.
02:53When we're talking about the most serious crimes.
02:56And so I think the stakes get higher as you get older.
02:58And that's why it's really important that we have conversations
03:01with children when they are young about, you know,
03:03not just kind of, you know, avoiding temptation,
03:06but cheating has particular negative consequences for you as well.
03:10Does cheating as a child through your childhood
03:14bode badly for later in life?
03:17Not necessarily, you know, so like we said,
03:20every child will cheat at some point,
03:21particularly when they're younger.
03:23So that in itself is not a big cause for concern.
03:26If you start to see repeated cheating,
03:28even when you're having conversations with your child,
03:30even when the teacher is having conversations,
03:32that might be when we'd start to worry a little bit more.
03:35Or if you start to see that cheating and really risky scenarios,
03:37you know, so high stakes tests
03:38where the outcomes are actually quite negative,
03:41then we'd be concerned.
03:42But if, you know, if your child's cheating at a board game,
03:45I chatted to my 10 year old about this topic a few days ago,
03:48and she said, yeah, well, of course,
03:49because you can win more games, right?
03:51So, you know, we're not super worried about those instances.
03:54They're moments for parenting,
03:55they're moments for helping children to develop and learn.
03:58Well, and that was going to be my next question,
04:00was what as adults can we do to discourage it
04:04if we want to discourage it?
04:06Yeah, I think we do want to discourage it.
04:08My child's probably not a great example.
04:11Look, I think having those open conversations with children
04:13is really important.
04:14And so where we come down really hard,
04:16so where punishments are quite punitive,
04:18children actually just end up lying about those situations.
04:21So you can have negative consequences.
04:24So what we want are those really open conversations about,
04:27hey, actually, when you cheat at a board game,
04:28that's not very fun for your friends.
04:30You know, that's not very fun for me.
04:31And people probably aren't going to want to play with you
04:33when you do that.
04:34As children are getting older,
04:36it might be about those negative consequences,
04:38you know, in terms of academic outcomes,
04:41but also the negative consequences for self.
04:43You know, it's important to be an honest person.
04:45People depend, you know, people rely on your honesty.
04:48That's a personal trait that you want to carry with you.
04:50And so that's a reason not to cheat as well.
04:53So those kinds of open conversations are really important.
04:56And that sort of goes without saying,
04:57but, you know, practising what we preach,
04:59modelling honesty ourselves,
05:01not cheating at things ourselves.
05:02There are research studies that show
05:04that when adults cheat,
05:05if you take a child into a game,
05:07they are so much more likely to cheat at that game themselves
05:09because they've observed that cheating behaviour
05:11in adults as well.