Re: "Is Your Child Lying to You? That's Good."

To the editor:

Mental health professionals have taken offense at likening President Trump's behavior to that of a young child viewing such a comparison as an insult and misunderstanding of normal childhood. Alex Stone's piece (1.7.18 'Is your child lying to you?  That's good.') describes the paradoxical finding that lying in childhood is a developmental capacity; conceptualizing and implementing deception is a sign of intelligence. Given President Trump's well documented tendency to prefabricate, some may feel inclined to once again assert that he is behaving like a 'child.  This would be a mistake.

All lying is not created equal. Stone reports that parents could not detect which children were lying. President Trump, on the other hand, is a terrible liar.  The effectiveness of a lie is in its power to deceive; most of President Trump's lies are so patently false as to be unbelievable. We are not fooled by his lies. On the contrary he looks foolish, unstable and, most worrisome, believing his own lies.  In other words, when he is lying he is often times engaged in self-deception rather than deceiving others.

He also engages in bullying behavior when he accuses those telling the truth of lying; the 'fake news' epithet being a prime example. Here President Trump is simultaneously lying and falsely claiming he and the public are being lied to. Most people see this as a transparent and desperate attempt to manipulate and rally his base; unlike the intelligent lying of childhood it speaks to a more sociopathic aspect to our President.

Respectfully submitted

Larry S. Sandberg MD