Is it wrong to tell white lies to children?

Is it ok to tell children white lies? I remember several instances where I’ve seen my mom, my grandmom, and other parent figures lie to children over very stupid things.

For example my one 3 year old cousins dad was going fishing so she asked where her dad was and my mom said “oh he’s at the doctors, you don’t want to be there yucky.” And I was really baffled at why she would say that, the kid started then to get worried because now she thought her dad was at the doctors.

Another example the other day we had brought a new toy from the store for my 1 year old and my five year old cousin was there. My grandmom started saying in response to nothing “oh we had to get that cause it was the last one of the shelf that’s why he has a toy”. He didn’t care, so I thought it was weird and almost harmful to lie about that, I don’t understand what that teaches. If the kid isn’t bothered by someone else having a toy why would you try to make it a thing?

I’ve seen this kind of white lying often done to children and I honestly think it’s one of the worst parenting techniques out there. It doesn’t teach anything and I feel like will eventually lead to kids just being mistrustful or liars themselves. Kids aren’t stupid and I think it’s asinine to constantly imply that they are by making up crap and feeding it to them. I think children deserve honesty, honesty doesn’t have to always be blunt, honesty can be told in appropriate ways to younger children.