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The aim of this article is to draw attention to an under-recognised but ethically important phenomenon involving the deception of children in research. The type of deception we are referring to is not planned deception that is part of the research design. Instead it is deception that occurs in individual cases where parents ask researchers not to reveal something about the research to their child. Our focus is children who do not have ultimate decisional authority—children around the ages of 7–14 years old who may have the cognitive capacity to understand but not to consent for themselves; children whose agreement is required but not sufficient to authorise research. We provide three illustrative scenarios for analysis. Then, we identif