Ask Hal – How Do You Handle Lying?
Hi Hal,
My five-year-old (who needs to remain nameless) is lying and seems to feel no remorse for it. It’s not just fantastic stories – its lies to avoid consequences, but lies that are so obvious everyone knows she’s lying. What can we do? I don’t like what I find on the internet. One person says tell her all about what honesty is and why she needs to practice it (she already knows this well) and another says go along with it and pretend you think she’s telling the truth and be her friend. I don’t like either of these answers, because they’re incomplete and altogether ineffective. I haven’t screamed about it, but I’ve probably made her feel really terrible and distanced from me, just what I didn’t want to do. I would like your opinion.
Jenny and I have had a similar struggle at times with both of our children. The quick answer is that lying is a universal, even necessary part of a child’s development. By lying a child is attempting to, all at the same time
a) test the solidity of the law of sowing and reaping (by attempting to get around the reaping of their consequences); b) employ their creative powers to shape reality and others’ perception of reality; c) test both the gullibility and trust levels of their parents; and d) take ownership over an area of their life in which they feel powerless.
As you can see, this is why lying is a complicated issue that defies easy techniques designed to make it stop. Sure, you will hear other parenting experts offer a range of answers, from a very heavy-handed “make them see the truth by pointing out the evidence that exposes their lie and leads them to a kind of repentance,” to the far-too-soft “pretend to be their friend” approach you cited.
What I’m learning is that the truth about lying is more about me than my child. When my child lies to me it stirs up all sorts of anxiety inside. I become worried about his/her sense of right and wrong. I become worried about his/her lack of conscience about the issue; I become worried about the actual content of the lie (what will happen to his teeth if he never brushes them but always lies about it?).
What I know is that if I decide to chase down a lie (pursuing the child’s statements and questioning their logic and exposing the evidence until they must confess!), then I am forcing my child into a no-win corner. Out of my anxiety (the stuff mentioned above), I will force them to either a) create more and more lies to cover up the initial one (encouraging their natural self-defensiveness); or b) shamefully lower their head and begrudgingly admit not only that they lied but that I was right about it. Either way my relationship with that child has suffered, leaving them feeling resentment and even contempt for me, because I gave in to my anxiety.
I must learn to let go of my responsibility for my child, especially as I watch them lie. I must learn to respect their choice to lie as their choice. It is simply that. What this allows me to do is not focus so much on their lie but focus more on my responsibility to them as I watch them lie.
So what is our responsibility to our children here? It is not to teach them things they already know. They already know that lying is wrong. They know that instinctively. Just reflect on how quickly they can point out when we lie to them by breaking our promises, or when we tell a story differently than it happened. This sense of the “wrongness” of deception is in their bones. Also, they already know right from wrong. Why else would they be lying to escape punishment? They know that whatever they did was “wrong,” and they feel badly about it. They not only want to escape your punishment, they also want to escape the bad feelings they have about what they did (forged your signature on a school note) or neglected to do (brush their teeth).
So what is our responsibility to our children here? It is to engage them honestly, the way we would with a spouse or close friend we thought was lying to us. If I were to suspect my wife of lying to me, what would happen if I automatically accused her and acted as if she were guilty? If I were to suspect a close friend of lying to me, what would happen if I were to pretend it weren’t so and just went on as usual? Either way the relationship will suffer.
My responsibility to those relationships would demand that I address my suspicion. This means first checking my own feelings, even running the evidence by others just to make sure I’m not inventing things or blowing things out of proportion. Addressing my suspicion then means honestly engaging the person I suspect with an admission of just that-my suspicion. “I am inclined to believe what you say because that’s how I think of you, as an honest person who wants to be truthful with me. This time I am having a hard time believing you and here’s why.” After revealing the reasoning behind your suspicion, you then engage in a respectful way, “What would you like for me to think about all this?” and “Where would you like for us to go from here?”
This is respectful dialogue that is neither heavy-handed accusation nor passive blindness to your own feelings. This is about furthering a relationship, not about training your kids in the ways of right and wrong. So if and when your child continues to say suspicious things, even in the face of contrary evidence, then you make up your mind about your response, regardless of whether they agree. This probably means sometimes you believe their version of the story and let them know that very clearly, especially if you are at all unsure. This probably also means setting a consequence for the lie and enforcing it even as they protest. One of the consequences of lying is that it makes it more difficult for others to automatically believe you in the future, and that they will first learn from their relationship with you.
Please know that this is not a fix-all technique, but rather an attempt on my part to call us all to a higher plane. Once on this higher plane, then I can begin to ask myself some serious questions about our overall relationship, like whether I’m creating enough space for my child to feel power over her own life (a common reason they lie). On this plane, I can then ask myself what emotional need I’m trying to elicit from my kids by needing them to behave and be truthful, and respect me as someone who wasn’t born yesterday (a common feeling we have when lied to).
Your feelings are very valid–you want your children to tell you the truth. When they don’t you feel hurt and concerned that they don’t respect you or trust you enough to tell the truth.
While it is very difficult, the challenge is to not take it personally. While it feels like a personal affront, your child’s lies are testing you, not insulting you. They are testing you on two conflicting fronts at the same time: a) your trust in their word, and b) your gullibility and willingness to be manipulated. They want you to trust them and they also want you to call them on their stuff. They want to be able to respect both their ability to shape their story and your ability to see through their lies.
They are really trying to trap you, but it’s nothing personal; it’s part of their development. The only way out is to calm your negative feelings on your own, reveal those negative feelings to them, and then walk away. A lie is potentially damaging to the relationship; it’s our job to rise above it and not let that happen.
(5 votes, average: 3.2 out of 5)
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