Hellobee Boards

I’m still dealing with really similar issues with my 5 year old. There were times last year where she would say her teacher was lying- like teacher saw her do something with her own two eyes, would gently correct her, and she would deny it and flat out say, no I didn’t, you’re lying!

We really focus a lot on the lying and telling the truth and that every time she lies to us, it breaks our trust and we don’t know when we can believe her. When she lies then eventually does tell us the truth, we *try* to focus on the positive of having eventually told the truth, not the thing she did wrong and the subsequent lie about it. But honestly I feel like these conversations are only recently getting through to her, like since she turned five. It’s so so very frustrating a and potentially dangerous like in the situation with your dog.

All I could say is to keep telling her why the truth is so important, why being able to trust her is important, how she wouldn’t like it if you and daddy lied to her all the time, or if you didn’t believe her when she was telling the truth because you didn’t k ow when you could trust her or not. It probably won’t sink in for a while but maybe some of it will? It’s infuriating.

It's developmentally appropriate. I know it's frustrating, but it doesn't mean your child is in danger of becoming a bad person. Not at all!

My three year old has started to lie too. It isn't malicious. I think it mostly comes down to this--she's experimenting with cause and effect in regards to communication. Example: I told her to put away the ipad and come eat her snack. So she says, "I'm not hungry". Why? Because she wants to keep using the ipad. A few minutes later she will tell me she's starving! Lol.

The only advice I can give, which only addresses part of the issue is instead of asking her questions about things you know are fact just state them as so. My son has not started lying, but I save him the headache of having to remember things correctly when I know he did something like “this morning you played with the giraffe toy” instead of “what did you play with this morning?” Or “did you play with the giraffe toy?

I read once not to ask your child questions you know the answer to. It shames them and then they don’t want to get in trouble/don’t want to upset you and will lie. The parent is unknowingly opening an opportunity to lie and incentivizing the lie.

If even my spouse can to me and said in an aggrieved tone, “who took out the trash last, was it you?” I would immediately deduce something was done wrong with the trash and I would probably feel like lying, haha.

Try “I notice your fingers have icing on them and the cupcakes have icing scraped off. I feel sad knowing that my cupcakes are messed up and I bet you feel pretty bad, too.” And see what they say.

The rock situation....I don’t know. Any possibility she’s trying to confess something that didn’t happen to appease you? She knows she’s supposed to confess something, so she makes something up because you keep pressing her about why she looks guilty?

Lying is developmentally normal. An adult that can’t lie probably has no real world social skills “how was that presentation, was it okay?” “I’m pretty sure that was the worst single presentation I’ve ever sat through in my entire life” wouldn’t win a lot of friends or influence people. Studies have shown early liars have higher IQ (google it) and its an actual skill that all humans with average or higher cognitive levels pick up eventually. Obviously as a parent, you want to encourage open communication but you also don’t want to set up “gotcha” moments for a 3 years old and you don’t want to punish or they just learn to lie more effectively until you can’t tell the difference.

It’s a tough balance to strike. I fail at this all the time and am always asking my kids question to things I already know, but I’m working on it.