Oregon Public Broadcasting

It was a heartstopping vision: a balloon shaped like a spaceship, possibly with a six-year-old boy inside, floating across the blue Colorado sky.

Now authorities say it was all an elaborate hoax -- a lie, officials say, that enmeshed a child.

Authorities are still sorting out exactly what the boy’s parents told him. But the story prompted OPB commentator Bob Balmer, a high school teacher, to talk with his students about deceit, family loyalty, and lies that bind.

Shortly after police announced that they thought the balloon boy saga was a hoax, I asked some of my high school students if their parents ever asked them to lie. I was prepared for a blanket hands-down "no-way my-parents-never-would-do-that" response.

Shows what I know.

More than half of my students said that their parents have coached them to lie.

One student said that occasionally her parents bought her liquor, and if someone asked her where she got it, she was to say: “From some stranger in front of a Safeway store.”

Another student told me that lying brought his family closer together. "It is like us versus them," he said. "It creates family bonds."

To my surprise there wasn’t an ounce of discomfort, not a slight hanging of the head at the students’ disclosures about deceit encouraged by their parents.

But then my students were quick to point out they wouldn’t lie about just anything. There was a hierarchy to their lies.

Would teens lie to their parents’ bosses about calling in sick? Of course they would.  They wouldn’t tell authorities if their parents cheated on taxes either.  And to the question:  Would you turn in your parents for robbery -- some said they would and others said they wouldn’t.

Murder?  Of course they would turn their parents over to authorities.  So you see, they said, they would not lie about just anything.

Then I asked: Is a parent asking a six year old to lie for them worse than asking a teenager to lie? 

To my students it seems that it is. One girl said, a "six year old only knows what his parents are telling him to lie, not the consequences of the lie. So it's much worse for a six year old to be asked to lie for a parent.”

Besides, she added, a child may do something wrong to keep a parent's affection.

We don’t know what was the balloon boy’s parents told him, of course. But many of my students said they believe whatever his parents did -- it might mess him up.

The balloon boy’s story is one that challenges all of us to think hard about what we tell our children every day.

Do we rope them into little hypocrisies, into small every day deceptions? What are the long term consequences for them when we do that, and where do we draw the line?