Trick the Troll

A gleeful hiding-and-tricking game where the child’s job is to plant a wrong idea in someone’s head. To fool the “Troll” about where the treasure is hidden, the child has to think about what the Troll will believe — and then deliberately point them the wrong way. Pulling off a good trick is false-belief understanding in action: not just predicting a wrong belief, but creating one. It also gives the brain’s stop-and-think muscles (inhibitory control) a real workout.

  1. Set the playful stakes. “The Troll wants to steal our treasure! Let’s TRICK him so he looks in the wrong place.” Keep the opponent a puppet or pretend character — that anchors the whole thing firmly in make-believe.
  2. Hide the treasure (a coin, button, or pebble) under one of two or three cups while the Troll (you, covering your eyes) “isn’t looking.”
  3. Lay the false trail. The Troll asks, “Where’s the treasure?” The child’s job is to point to or name the WRONG cup.
  4. Fall for it — big. The Troll opens the empty cup: “Argh, nothing here! You tricked me!” The delight of the reveal is the engine.
  5. Coin-in-hand version (lowest materials). Hide a coin in one fist, present both, let the opponent guess — the child can shuffle, bluff (“it’s definitely not THIS one…”), and keep a poker face.
  6. Swap roles so the child sometimes gets fooled too, feeling for themselves what it’s like to hold a wrong belief and then have it corrected.

Variation: Wrong-Way Arrow — if pointing the wrong way is too hard at first, lay a misleading token or arrow instead (easier), then build up. Team Trick — the child tells the truth to a teammate but tricks the Troll (this tests whether they track who should know). Double Bluff once they’re skilled.

Requirements

  • Space: A table or floor
  • Surface: N/A
  • Materials: A small "treasure" (coin, button, pebble) and two or three opaque cups, or just two hands; a puppet "Troll" is optional but helps keep it pretend
  • Participants: 1 adult + 1 child; works with three for the team version
  • Supervision: Adult-led game

Rationale & Objective

To deceive on purpose, a child must represent that another person holds a belief, grasp that the belief can be made false, and then act to implant it — essentially a behavioural, active version of the false-belief task. The research shows two things clearly. First, deliberate, selective deception consolidates around age 4–5: Peskin (1992) found fewer than a third of 3-year-olds, but over 80% of 5-year-olds, could conceal a preference from a competitor — so this game sits right in a 5-year-old’s sweet spot. Second, much of younger children’s difficulty is inhibitory, not conceptual: Carlson, Moses & Hix (1998) showed 3-year-olds could deceive easily in low-inhibition versions but failed when they had to physically point the wrong way, and Russell and colleagues’ (1991) “windows task” found children who knew the winning move kept pointing at the baited box anyway. Theory of mind and inhibitory control are tightly linked (Carlson & Moses, 2001; Devine & Hughes’ 2014 meta-analysis), and training studies show ToM gains can actually cause children to start deceiving (Ding et al., 2015). Honest framing — because this game literally trains belief-manipulation, keep it quarantined inside pretend (a fictional Troll, a clear game frame) and pair it with explicit real-life honesty talk; if a child is in a phase of stressful real lying, lean on the prosocial surprise game instead.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: gives the game away — glances or points at the true spot, can’t keep a straight face, blurts the real location; may know they should mislead but can’t inhibit the truthful response
  • Developing: hides the true clue (covers tracks, stays quiet about the real spot) but doesn’t yet actively mislead; may “trick” the friendly puppet too, not tracking who should know
  • Proficient: actively lays a false trail — points to the wrong cup or gives a misleading clue — and does it selectively, fooling the Troll but telling a teammate the truth
  • Advanced: keeps the false belief going under questioning (“are you sure?” → stays committed), maintains a consistent cover, and can explain why the Troll looks in the wrong place

Safety Notes

  • Anchor every trick to a fictional opponent (Troll, dragon, puppet) and a clear game frame — never to deceiving a real, trusting person about something real
  • Say the rule out loud: “In the trick game we fool the Troll for fun; with real people, in real life, we tell the truth”
  • Always end with the cheerful reveal so deception stays tied to shared fun and mutual knowing, not to getting away with something
  • Never punish in-game “winning by a trick” — that’s the game — but do praise real-life truth-telling separately
  • If the child is going through a phase of frequent real lying that’s straining the family, soft-pedal this game and favour the surprise game instead

Hints

  • Playfulness: ham up being fooled rather than cleverly “catching” the child — getting outsmarted is the fun
  • Sustain interest: rotate hiding spots and the opponent character; add a double-bluff once they’re proficient; swap roles often
  • Common mistake: making it about a real person (“trick Grandma”); being too good at catching them (deflating); long sessions — keep rounds to a few minutes
  • Limited materials: coin-in-hand, “which cup,” or whisper-a-wrong-hiding-spot needs almost nothing
  • Cross-domain: executive function and inhibition (the core co-trained skill — suppressing the urge to point at the truth); emotion regulation (poker face, tolerating suspense); language (building and keeping a cover story)
  • Progression: wrong-way arrow or token → point or say the wrong cup → keep a poker face → deceive selectively (trick the foe, inform the friend) → hold the trick under questioning

Sources

  • Carlson, S. M., Moses, L. J. & Hix, H. R. (1998). “The role of inhibitory processes in young children’s difficulties with deception and false belief.” Child Development, 69(3), 672–691
  • Carlson, S. M. & Moses, L. J. (2001). “Individual differences in inhibitory control and children’s theory of mind.” Child Development, 72(4), 1032–1053
  • Russell, J., Mauthner, N., Sharpe, S. & Tidswell, T. (1991). “The ‘windows task’ as a measure of strategic deception in preschoolers and autistic subjects.” British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 9(2), 331–349
  • Peskin, J. (1992). “Ruse and representations: On children’s ability to conceal information.” Developmental Psychology, 28(1), 84–89
  • Chandler, M., Fritz, A. S. & Hala, S. (1989). “Small-scale deceit: Deception as a marker of two-, three-, and four-year-olds’ early theories of mind.” Child Development, 60(6), 1263–1277
  • Devine, R. T. & Hughes, C. (2014). “Relations between false belief understanding and executive function in early childhood: A meta-analysis.” Child Development, 85(5), 1777–1794
  • Ding, X. P., Wellman, H. M., Wang, Y., Fu, G. & Lee, K. (2015). “Theory of mind training causes honest young children to lie.” Psychological Science, 26(11), 1812–1821
  • CASEL — Social Awareness (perspective-taking) and Self-Management (impulse control)
  • Head Start ELOF — Approaches to Learning (controls impulses; holds and manipulates information); Social & Emotional
  • UK EYFS — PSED Self-Regulation ELG (control immediate impulses when appropriate)