The most frequent example was parents threatening to leave children alone in public unless they behaved.

 

Persuasion² ranged from invoking³ the support of the tooth fairy to telling children they would go blind unless they ate particular vegetables.

 

Another strategic example was: "That was beautiful piano playing."

 

The study, published in the International Journal of Psychology⁴, examined the use of "instrumental lying" - and found that such tactically-deployed falsehoods were used by an overwhelming majority of parents in both the United States and China - based on interviews with about 200 families.

 

'I'll buy it next time'

 

The most commonly used lie - popular with both US and Chinese families - was parents pretending to a child that they were going to walk away and leave the child to his or her tantrum（发脾气）.

 

"The pervasiveness⁵ of this lie may relate to the universality of the challenge parents face in trying to leave a place against their child's wishes," say the researchers.

 

Another lie that was common in both countries was the "false promise to buy a requested toy at some indefinite time in the future".

 

Researchers established different categories of these untruths.

 

There were "untrue statements related to misbehaviour", which included: ''If you don't behave, I will call the police," and: "If you don't quiet down and start behaving, the lady over there will be angry with you.''

 

If these seem rather unheroic（胆怯的） examples of parenting by proxy⁶ threat, there are some more startling lies recorded.

 

Under the category of "Untrue statements related to leaving or staying" a parent was recorded as saying: "If you don't follow me, a kidnapper⁷ will come to kidnap you while I'm gone."

 

There were also lies motivated by protecting a child's feelings - labelled as "Untrue statements related to positive feelings."

 

This included the optimistic: "Your pet went to live on your uncle's farm where he will have more space to run around."

 

A rather self-serving untruth was used for a quick getaway from a toy shop: ''I did not bring money with me today. We can come back another day."

 

There was also a selection of lies relating to "fantasy characters", also used to enforce good behaviour, such as in the run-up to Christmas.

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