Dear Dr Ash
I’m concerned about my twelve-year-old, who’s started lying about small things, such as homework deadlines and whether or not he nicked his sister’s birthday fiver (he did). His mum and I have tried talking to him about these deceits, explaining we prize honesty above all things. He’s been startlingly defiant in response, raising objections that have unsettled us. First, he points out that Boris Johnson became prime minister despite being a proven liar, and might even well make a comeback because “people like him – so who cares if he lies sometimes?” Secondly, he says I often come out with small lies to protect my nearest and dearest – such as that my mum’s hat looks lovely (not), and that her life expectancy is longer than the doctor has privately told us. How is it possible to model a good example of truth-telling to my children when life continually models its inherent contradictions?
Moraliser
Merseyside
Dear Moraliser,
Despite the seeming rigour of societies governed by justice and the rule of law, humans are by nature storytellers and fabulists. As I write, the countryside is bitterly cold, with silver hoarfrost outlining the tree branches and intense, almost aggressive stars piercing the dark sky. On nights like this it’s not hard to imagine the compulsion our ancestors felt to read these signs as inscriptions, to see explanations for the smallest happenings writ large in the cosmic. We are compelled to tell stories, we use them to make sense of the world, whether they are literally true or not.
You and I both understand that storytelling is different to lying, but learning the subtle distinctions between infinite varieties of fiction takes many, many years. It’s unsurprising that out of the two decades required for brain development, nearly half the time goes to the development of the frontal cortex, which is broadly responsible for behavioural regulation and social reasoning. Although there is no single neural centre for lying – neuroimaging studies show that different brain regions are associated with different kinds of lies – the frontal cortex consistently emerges as a key player. Therefore in a young man of your son’s age, although the desire to mythologise is fully formed, the biological ability to do it well is going to be another decade in the making.
You’ve kindly spared your mother’s feelings about her hat and feel you are protecting her from news about her medical prognosis; knowing when deceptions like these are helpful and when they are hurtful requires wisdom and sound judgement. These will come with time and age. Meanwhile your son is living in a bewildering social world without the neural hardware he needs to perceive it clearly, and he is groping around in clumsy ways to find its boundaries. Like all young adolescents he wants clear social rules and is frustrated by what he sees as hypocrisy in adults. You cannot explain the subtleties of wisdom to a teenager, any more than a fish can tell him what it’s like to breathe water. If he could understand the explanation, he wouldn’t need it.
Until he acquires a bit more wisdom and insight – or at the very least, significantly improved connectivity in his frontal cortex – it is understandable that you’d like to offer your him some solid guidelines. You have rightly emphasised the importance of absolute honesty within your family and this is the most important rule at his age. Outside of that, I suggest that you let go of rules and admit that the moral world is full of nuance. Your son is establishing an independent identity and you certainly haven’t had your last defiant conversation, but this too is part of the world, and the world can be a very beautiful place if we choose to tell the story that way.
Best wishes,
Dr Ash
Dear Dr Ash,
At Christmas I saw Bridget Jones’s Diary again and relished my favourite cinematic dinner party – the scene in which all the “smug marrieds” are so patronising to BJ about being single. My husband was also secretly watching from the sofa, while pretending to do the crossword (he likes Renée Zellwegger) so I challenged him: “Now do you see why I hate dinner parties so much?” I loathe all the one-upmanship about who’s saved a fortune by turning the radiators off all winter (because their regular Wim Hof-style ice baths keep them warm), or whether the Princess of Wales shops in Waitrose or Lidl. I can’t stand their antediluvian views on immigration or prurience about their teenagers’ sex lives. In fact, I’d happily never attend or host a dinner party again. My husband, on the other hand, loves to put on his best shirt and regale supper parties with his fishing stories; even better if he can invite a dozen friends over to ours and incinerate a dead beast over a flame grill. Short of divorce, can you suggest a way out?
Misanthrope
Maidenhead
Dear Misanthrope,
Of the many evils that man can wreak upon man, being a boring conversationalist is one of the worst. Their malevolent sorcery means that not only are they boring, they can somehow make everyone around them boring too. You seem to have found not just one of these wretched people but an entire coven of them; I understand your desire to turn tail and run.
But before resorting to more drastic measures, it is worth a moment of pause to consider what drives appalling dinner party behaviour. On a superficial level, most human conversations are absolutely banal. We talk about the weather, or the route we took to get somewhere, or the latest irrelevant gossip about the latest soon-to-be-irrelevant celebrity. The truth is that absolutely no one finds these conversations interesting.
But at a deeper level, the content of the conversation is far less important than its form. We give each other attention. We practise turn-taking. We make encouraging noises and exchange sympathies. These practices are a kind of social grooming behaviour, and just as when monkeys pick nits off each other, our verbal grooming is always meaningful even when it looks absolutely revolting.
So like all social species, your dinner party guests are clumsily enacting tribal bonding rituals. They are grooming each other with meaningless exchanges, trying to establish in-group and out-group distinctions with their political and cultural declarations. It may help you to tolerate them if you realize that, beneath it all, they are simply seeking warmth and connection with you – even though their behaviour is understandably achieving the opposite.
Your husband’s strategy, annoying as it sounds, is actually a good one: he tells the stories he wants to hear and he enjoys having an audience. He is using the group for what they can give him, without worrying too much about what they can’t. This is, if you can stomach it, a decent option.
But to be honest, I’m on your side with this. These people are clearly not your tribe. I see no reason why you should be at dinner parties you hate, and no reason why your husband should forego dinner parties he enjoys. Marriage doesn’t require you to enjoy each other’s friends, and it certainly doesn’t require you to pick nits off them. My advice is that you excuse yourself from these wretched dinners and find a more congenial group of tablemates.
Best wishes,
Dr Ash
Dr Ash Ranpura is a neuroscientist and clinical neurologist
