Moral development of a 3-year-old

Is it John, or is it Spiderman? All I know for sure is that his shirt talks, and it says, "It's web-slinging time."

I know that kids go through standard stages of moral development. But I do wish that I had paid more attention in that developmental psychology course that I took 20 years ago at MSU. Now, when John begins to do a new something outrageous, I am never quite sure if it is just a sign that he is entering a new developmental phase, or if it is really just because he is "being John."

His current thing is lying. He can do it without batting an eye. He often does this when adults ask him questions - he just makes up the answer that seems the most interesting to him, I guess. Of course, I often have to explain this to adults since they otherwise look at me in confusion based on his answers. Recently, a generous person to whom I had to report, "He's lying" just smiled and said, "At this age, we call it pretending." Hmm, I wonder at what age we outgrow that? If one decides to follow a career in politics, then apparently, never.

Today, I was trying to tell John how proud I was of him for something he had accomplished. "Wow, that was great! I can't believe you did that. You must be really big. How old are you? Are you... five?" Without missing a beat, John calmly answered, "Yes!"