Dealing with lying children presents a difficult choice.  When they're young, lying seems like a developmental milestone; they are catching on that they may have an exploitable information advantage.  Since they are developing a marvelous new power it feels like we should be accepting misuse from time to time.  On the other hand most of us know liars who have mastered their sophisticated power and harness it freely to swindle others.  We wouldn't want our children to become grown-up liars.  Here are my suggestions for handling lying children.

Accept No Lying

I don't associate with liars.  Not at all. No way.  I've met too many in my life and they've stolen too much from me (you can read about some of the time's I've been cheated and stolen from by my trusted business partners in All-In: How I Made $800,000 in a Lifetime and $15,000 Last Week).  You can't talk to a liar because they make up information.  You can't make plans with a liar because they are willing to jeopardize them.  You can't make a deal with a liar because they won't hold up their end.  Being a liar negates any good skills or qualities a person may have.  In real life, if I find out that someone has lied to me then I disengage and never trust that person with anything.  For any important matters, they don't exist.

Because I love my kids I've told them my views on lying, and I tell them in the same way I described above.  People who lie are not worth talking to or dealing with.  That's all, just the facts.  Here are some points I told my kids:

Just a short post today as I am traveling across the country .  A lot of parents think that paying children an allowance in exchange for duties like chores helps teach them about money and work and all that.  It's a great idea ... except for a little side-effect:  It totally demotivates kids to do chores.

Psychology research tells us that rewards are both highly motivating and highly demotivating.  What?  Perfecting Dad, you're being a clown here.  Write with sense.  Ok.  Here goes.

When Rewards Don't Motivate

Rewards don't motivate when they aren't related to the quality of the outcome.  If you pay someone simply to do something then it turns out that they become less likely to do that activity on their own.  One study, testing how children could be motivated to draw, showed that when children were given a reward simply for drawing they actually reduced their frequency of drawing.  Even when they enjoyed drawing before, once they knew they would be paid to produce a drawing then they did not spontaneously draw when they knew they wouldn't be paid.  What does this mean?  If you pay your children for chores then you are inadvertently teaching you kids not to do chores unless they are paid.  They will naturally become demotivated, which is probably the opposite of what you want.  By the way, this works on everyone including adults.  One of the surest ways to stop someone from liking something is to pay them for it.

How To Use Rewards Properly

The news just hit me this week:  My friend's marriage is on the train to Splitsville.  She says the husband was maintaining a little secret lifestyle: "Working" into the evening at restaurants with female co-workers, communicating by email and Facebook, and even perusing the online dating sites.  Dirty dog.  It makes me sad for her and angry for me, since he's a man chalking up to another X for my species.  She found out about it by hacking into his computer, put on the scent by progressively suspicious behaviour.  It seems he felt safe to act.

It's foreseeable.  I always say that if people didn't shed tears of joy at their own wedding then the marriage is doomed.  That's a bit of a joke, but I also quip that if they keep separate bank accounts then they're also in trouble.  My second rule of thumb is less of a joke.  It's an example of couples who keep separate lives, essentially secrets, from each other in the name of a "healthy" need for personal space and individual freedom.  Many people think this is fine, but I think it's the risky road to a failed marriage.  Here's why (and tell me if you agree because I know some people don't):

I don’t think many would deny that caving is a way cool activity. Hints of danger, definitely novel, and usually not something you’de think of doing with your pregnant wife and three kids between the ages of 6 and 2. Luckily, Lusk Cave offers the perfect mix of easiness and awesomeness for any family. Best of all, it isn’t a commercialized or developed tourist cave so the experience seems very authentic, as if you are exploring it for the first time.

The cave, running through rock just below the forest floor, was carved by a small stream which still gargles through it. It is a baby version of a real cave, with all the cool features like sunlight streaming through skylights, the river, the high walls in some places, the ceiling dropping to water level in others. Let your imagination run wild to walk the vast Kazumura lava-tubes of Hawaii, or boat black-water through the Waimoto glow-worm caverns of New Zealand, or dive Maxico’s Dos Ojos Caverns. The little stream could be a raging torrent, with waterfalls and underground lakes. The cavern walls could be 50 metres high and the journey could be miles below the surface.

Moms and Dads, please let me know how I SHOULD have handled this situation, in which I recently enraged a mother with my handling of an incident with her son. I am totally unsatisfied with what happened and I'd like to learn another way to get through situations like this.  I don't usually hang with mothers or children like the ones I encountered last week, but they are neighbours and our children go to school with each other and play together a lot.  Normally things go fine, but there was this incident last week:

The Incident

My wife and I had some neighbours over; three couples and their children including ours, playing nicely. I was strolling down a hall when my leg buckled and I was nearly dropped to one knee. I felt like I had been shot in the ankle from behind. My head spun backwards so I could see my killer before I died; instead I saw a 5 year old boy who we’ll call Damian to preserve his anonymity.

Damian stared up from a little scooter that he had slammed into me with. Judging from the pain, he must have taken quite a running start before hitting me. Damian smiled.