There was an article in the Wall Street Journal recently about false memories, and how easy they are to create. It seems there was a German study where students were given a series of tasks and then told to perform some of them, and simply imagine themselves performing the rest. Two weeks later they were asked to remember which tasks they had performed and which tasks they had merely imagined: a full third of them got the answers wrong.
This, of course, is not news to any parent, especially one who has had to deal with a hysterical child screaming, “But I KNOW I turned my homework in—I REMEMBER handing it to the teacher!” only to have the same homework make it’s appearance at the bottom of the laundry hamper a week later.
One theory to explain this is that, for humans, perception is reality: that is, as humans we are unable to process new information without first being prejudiced by prior knowledge. That even while we are taking in the new knowledge (my homework is missing), we are being influenced by the old (I was supposed to turn it in). This is important to understand as a parent because it helps explain how your children are never, ever guilty of misplacing anything—ever.
Here’s how it works: as soon as you ask them a question such as “Where are your shoes?” their brain is torn between the new knowledge that their shoes are apparently lost and the old knowledge that this is not something you will be happy about. With those two pieces of knowledge firmly in place their brain then begins to create an ideal marriage of the two: that while it is true that their shoes are indeed lost, it is not their fault, because they put them right over there by the door (or on the porch, or in their room, or wherever it is you told them to put them).
In fact, it is sometimes possible to watch as their brains create these enticing fictions for them out of nothing more than dread and a sincere desire not to be yelled at. “Where are your shoes?” you say, and they respond with, “Aren’t they by the door? I mean, they’re by the door, aren’t they? Where they belong? Because, ah, that’s where I put them. I remember, because I thought to myself when I got home that I’d better take my shoes off and put them by the door, like you always tell me to do, and so, that’s what I did.”
At this point, just like the German students, the story is so embedded in their brain that they can actually see themselves taking off their shoes and putting them right where you told them to. (Of course, if they examined this memory more closely they might also find that there was a big purple unicorn floating around the periphery, as well as a whole family of talking squirrels).
If you show signs of doubting them (“Please: you’ve never put your shoes away in your life,”) they will grow more and more insistent that they are telling the Truth (capitol “T”), and even begin to become indignant that you would have the audacity to doubt them. And, the thing is, they are telling the truth—or at least telling what they remember the truth to be. Face it: the mind is a tricky thing, and a child’s mind, with its leaps in some areas and regressions in others (how come the same person who can program a DVR cannot understand that leaving wet newspaper on a wooden floor is a bad idea?) is even trickier.
Still, maybe that’s the secret: use their mental lapses against them. Now if I could only make them believe I really did buy them those Lucky jeans for school this year.