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:

1. People who lie are not worth talking because what they say might not be true.
2. There is never any reason good enough to lie.  Brave people tell the truth even if they did something wrong.  Trying to get away from a punishment is not worth becoming a liar for.
3. It is very hard to fix a lie because even if you are sorry, nobody will believe it since you proved your were a liar.
4. I explain that if my kids ever lied to me then it is a severe injury to our relationship.  I would feel very sad that I couldn't trust what they said.

Set Up The "Rules" Such That Children Don't Feel The Need to Lie

Some parenting coaches say that children lie because they figure there is no harm done.  For example:  If Grasshopper ate a candy when he wasn't allowed, but lied about it, then who does it hurt?  Eating the candy doesn't much hurt anyone, they are right, but lying about it is a stain on the character.  Therefore, I recommend that there should not be much of a punishment if Grasshopper does something like eat an extra candy against parental advice.  I say advice instead of parental orders because there is no need to make rigid rules about eating candy.

When parents want a candy they get a candy.  It should be the same with children.  You get the children to regulate their candy input by not buying too much, keeping it out of sight, and by talking to them about what candy does and how it isn't healthy food.  The child doesn't have a nonsense (to the child) rule to break and no motivation to lie against said rule.  If parents choose instead to have many rigid rules then the child becomes confused.  They know that, one day when they're older, it will be ok to eat candy whenever they want but they don't understand why it isn't ok today.  The conclusion:  Mom and Dad made up an unfair rule.  Everyone knows it's ok to break unfair rules; that's not a character defect, that's almost a virtue!  Don't make them think they should become brave freedom fighters, just relax some of these rules into "advice" or "good ideas" such that they don't have to lie.

Distinguish Between Lying and Other Things

Young children are constantly making up stories, which is fine.  We adults do the same.  In fact some grown-ups are employed as actors, whose whole job is to pretend they are someone else.  The difference between lying and storytelling fun is whether the other person knows about it and whether it's purposeful.  When people tell a story, the ones listening know that it's just a story.  When people play a trick on someone, that someone finds out that it was just a trick.  But when people lie, they hope that the other person never finds out.  People lie to escape trouble, to get someone else in trouble when they don't deserve it, to make themselves look better than they are, to make others look better or worse than they are, or to get something.

Delve deeply into the motive before you t interpret everything as a lie:

• If you ask your child, sitting right in front of you with a full plate, "Did you eat you dinner?", and they grin back over a full plate giggling, "Yes" then that's not a lie.  The child knows you know they didn't eat the food.  It's a joke not a lie.  Joking is good developmental progress and I recommend you laugh heartily when children attempt jokes or pretending.
• If you yell to your child from another room, "Did you eat your dinner?" and they reply "Yes" but still have a full plate as before, then it may still not be a lie.  The child may be making a joke just the same, not realizing that the situation is different.  I recommend a code like "For Real" to let the child know you need the real answer and not a joke.  You could say, "For real, did you eat your dinner?"  The child should know not to joke or play.
• Sometimes the child doesn't remember or makes a mistake.  This is age dependent, and you know your child.  If you ask them questions and you get a false answer decide whether it's a memory or concentration issue.  Use more questions to probe whether the child forgot.  Let the child know that forgeting something is ok, but they should just say they aren't sure, or they "think" it happened one way but it might not have been.

Parent:  "What did you do at school today?"

Grasshopper:  "Um, we learned our words, had show and tell, ate lunch, then went to the library."

Parent:  "You had show and tell today?"

Grasshopper:  "Yep."

Parent:  "What did you show?"

Grasshopper: "My giant pencil from Niagara Falls."

Parent:  "Can you show it to me?"

Grasshopper goes briefly to his bag, then remembers, "Oh, no.  Show and tell was yesterday.  Today we did gym in the morning."

• Sometimes the child misunderstands your question, doesn't think to provide critical information, or is incompetent.  If you ask grasshopper, "Did you give your brother his socks like I asked?" then grasshopper may say "Yes" even though what he actually did was take the socks and put them on his brother's bed, hoping that his brother would notice them while wandering the house at some future time.  That's not a lie, it's just incompetence.  If you're not sure whether the child is lying, follow up with more questions.

Parent:  "You gave him the socks ... where did you give them to him?"

Grasshopper:  "Well, I put them on his bed for him."

Parent: "Oh.  Well I wanted you to give to him in his hands so he could put them on right away."

Grasshopper: "Sorry."

Dealing With a Lie

I don't believe in punishments that wouldn't happen in grown-up life, and I don't believe in protecting my kids from kid-level versions of what would happen in grown up life.  So, I'm faced with a dilemma.  In real life I would excommunicate a liar.  So what do I if the liar is my child?  It turns out that I have no choice but to excommunicate him or her.  It happened to my oldest boy.  He lied about hurting his brother and the result was terrible for the child.

He had already heard the "Liars are bad" talk, so he knew exactly what he was doing.  I had to lay it on.  I told him how disappointed I was and asked him how I could ever talk with him or do things with him if he was telling lies.  Then after that, for a couple of days, almost every time he spoke to me I asked him if he was lying.  He was very ashamed of his lie and had to live with the shame for a while.

After a couple of days I gave him the "Liars are bad" talk again and told him I didn't want to have a liar son, so if he wanted we could assume he just had a lapse in judgment the last time.  As far as I know, my oldest has only purposely lied to me two times in his six year life, so I believe the method works.  The middle child, four years old, has never outright lied after seeing what happened to his brother (this just changed over the weekend, between when I started this post and publishing).

There are many tears, and there is nothing that the child can do to re-establish trust.  Every effort, explanation, promise just seems like more lying.  It's devastating for the child to experience how badly the relationship is cruched by the weight of dishonesty, and it hurts me to see the crying and begging.  I think parents have to brave through this because the emotional impact is so strong that the lesson sinks in deep.  I know that later he will meet a lot of liars, many apparently successful.  I'm relying on that emotional event I created for him to provide the appropriate cost/benefit perspective for him to make the right decisions.

One other point:  Since the consequence is severe, parents must avoid falsly accusing a child of lying.  Investigate fully to make absolutely sure.  The false conviction is as bad as letting the lie go.

What About Fibs?

Fibs are small lies or omissions.  I was "reprogramming" my second child for lying about candy wrappers left behind on a seat at the DMV -- his first lie.  It soon became obvious that there were more wrappers than the number of candies that the second child ate.  Therefore, some of the wrappers were from the older child who was with him.  After I'd finished with the younger child I explained, in front of both, that the older one was showing very poor character also.  He didn't come out to admit that some of the wrappers were left by him, preferring to simply let the younger take all the heat while relying on good luck to get off.  I know that the older one thought he wasn't lying since nobody had asked him.  However, I told him that he was dishonest and that was almost as bad as outright lying even if it seems like it's a lot smaller.

There are no small defects in character.  When something is wrong then it's wrong.  Getting into a fuzzy rationalization about what's small enough to be ok leads to a slippery slope.  Each new crime is just a little worse than the last until, over the years and the months, anything goes.  If character is important, then accept no compromises.

Why Is It Important?  Don't Kids Grow Out Of It?

Maybe, but there is big danger that they don't.  I've met many adults in low and high positions who are willing to lie, which is proof that not everyone grows out of it.  The problem is that successful lying has strong rewards built right in.  Kids need a very strong moral standard, ingrained in them from a young age, to counteract that reward.  Parents who accept lying without much dissuasion effort teach their kids that there is no real-world consequence to lying, so why not try if it?  Since these kids practice more, they get better and better at lying.  I know, because I was a good liar.  My parents didn't really do too much about my lying when they found out.  I remember being a terrible liar in about grade three, but by the time I got into Jr and Senior high school I became a master.  It was only when I experienced getting swindled and back-stabbed as an adult that I realized what a terrible flaw lying really is.

If The Parent Is A Liar, Don't Expect The Kid To Tell The Truth

Self explanatory.  Parents who don't mind a lie here and there to get ahead shouldn't even bother to try teaching their kids otherwise.  Kids are too smart to be fooled so easily.  I actually feel ashamed right now because we were at a carnival and my child found a stuffed prize on the ground, brand new, obviously just dropped seconds before.  I didn't see him find it so I don't know if it fell out of the contest booth or if someone dropped it.  When I asked him, he said he didn't know either.  After standing around for a minute or two to see that nobody claimed it, we kept it.  I'm not sure that I handled that right.  Usually we leave found items behind, hoping that the original owner will come back for it; in this case there was absolutely no chance that this stuffy would survive for more than 30 seconds if we left it -- it would either be trampled or taken by the hordes.  I hope I didn't give a scenario in which he can justify that it's ok to take things as long as the original owner can't find them.

Talk Back!

Many people think differently about this than I do.  How about you?  Do you think lying is a big deal?  How do you deal lying in the family?