What is a polite lie?
A “polite lie” is also know as being a “social fake” or telling a “white lie.” We consider telling a polite lie when the unfiltered truth would unintentionally hurt someone or cause an unintended conflict. So, we filter what we want to say to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. When I tell a polite lie, I try not to stray too far from my truth. For example, if a friend asks me if I like their new hairstyle, (not so much), I try to find something I do like about it. Instead of saying, “no, I don’t like it,” I might say, “I love your hair color” (which I do). I’m preserving their feelings while staying true to myself. Some people might also call this a lie by omission.
Since a common polite lie is to react politely when given a non-preferred gift, this is a perfect social skills topic for December, as we enter the gift-giving season.
How do we teach about “polite lies” or the “social fake?”
Many social skills lie in grey areas and we know that grey areas are nuanced and challenging for our students with autism and mental health issues. The grey area is fuzzy. I like to start teaching polite lies by discussing the grey area between “truth” and “lies,” and also give examples of other social skills grey areas. For example, there is being enthralled with a conversation topic on one end of the spectrum and being completely bored with a topic on the other end. But…there is a whole grey area in between, …. “acting interested” in the conversation topic until you can change it.
Discovering the grey area between two absolutes is an important concept to teach our students and this grey area can apply to many difficulties your student may be having in the social world.
Key Points:
When I teach polite lies, (aka the social fake), I spend some time on some key points because it is important to me that as an instructor, I don’t give the impression that we always have be nice…or that we have to push our “true” feelings to the deep abyss, never to be seen again.
This is a slide from my “polite lies” google slides product.
In my polite lies packet, I emphasize these points:
- We can be truthful and kind at the same time.
- We don’t use polite lies to get ourselves out of trouble.
- We consider polite lies when we don’t want to hurt or offend another person.
- We stay true to ourselves but filter our response. (if you have already done instruction on using a social filter (see this prior blog post) you might revisit this discussion). Using our social filter and telling a polite lie are closely-related concepts.
Teaching Sequence
- Teach the vocabulary of “truth,” “lie” and “polite lie.” Emphasize that you are not encouraging them to lie but rather to consider the grey area between absolute truth and lies.
- Explore how we react to gifts we don’t like: I love to start out by having students view Jimmy Kimmel’s “I gave my kids a terrible present” youtube clip. The kids in this video have very STRONG reactions to receiving awful gifts so our students find it easy to contrast these reactions with a more polite way of receiving a gift…even one we dislike. Another engaging clip features “Sue” from the TV show, the middle, opening her birthday presents here.
- Review social scenarios where telling a polite lie might be indicated. I offer multiple scenarios with real photographs in my polite lies packets. Given these scenarios, have students share what they would be thinking and how they would verbally respond.
- Review WHEN to tell a polite lie and when to tell the truth. Don’t even include “telling a lie” as an option. Include scenarios where the person is considering telling a lie to get out of trouble as shown below, so you are absolutely clear that you are not encouraging lying to avoid taking responsibility.
Helpful Links:
Not sure how to write an IEP goal for this particular skill? Get some inspiration from the “social filter” goals in the social skills IEP goal bank on my home page.
Looking for a lesson plan on polite lies? Check out my free social skills lesson plans here.
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Polite lies product: three versions
Google slides, Boom cards and the PDF/EASEL version. If you purchase the Google slides version with the intention of also exporting it as a pdf, please know that the animations that are in the slides version will not work in the PDF version.
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