What Do I Do About Lying? Part 1 of 2
“His constant lying is driving me crazy!” This is not an unusual comment to hear from a parent of a seven or eight-year-old. Parents always want to know why their child doesn’t tell the truth, and perhaps that is the perfect way to begin dealing with the problem of lying. Over the next couple of months, we will discuss why children lie and what parents can do to teach their children that honesty is the best policy.
First, parents must be willing to become students of their children. They need to study them like a top salesperson sizes up a prospect. The salesperson wants to know what makes the prospective buyer tick, why he or she says certain things. By studying these things, the salesperson begins to understand the person he is talking to. Not only that, but it also helps him make the sale.
When our children are involved in any behavior that is contrary to the boundaries we have set for them, it is important to study them so as to be able to appraise what it is that there behavior is saying to us. Lying is often a signal that your child is showing how inadequate he feels, or he may be attempting to avoid a consequence. For either case, you must deal with the lying behavior by using a consequence. Deal with the child by reassuring him that you care about who he is as a person. Let me give an example.
Johnny was a boy who was constantly bragging about all the things that he had and what he could do. He exaggerated about his own personal achievements, and he fell into the lying trap of continually boasting, “I’m better than you.”
Billy came up to Johnny in school one day and said, “Did you see the new car in my driveway? My dad just bought a four-wheel drive truck that can go up the side of mountains.” Johnny responded with, “That’s nothing. My dad has two four-wheel drive trucks that can…” Later Johnny was forced to face his lie when Billy saw him in his yard with his mom. When asked if what had been said earlier was true, Mrs. Smith was shocked, but she was used to what she had considered to be Johnny’s overactive imagination. Her question at his point was how to handle this situation. Billy was obviously gloating at the fact he had trapped her son. The other area to be analyzed was why her son persisted at telling these lies.
“Billy, let me talk to Johnny for a moment. We’ll come over to talk to you later.” During her conversation with her son, she began letting him know that lying or exaggerating was not acceptable and that it was obviously a problem area for Johnny. She also said that Johnny was going to have to go over to Billy’s house, apologize for lying, and correct the statements that were made.
The handling of the behavior was only half over. It was now time to study the situation. Usually parents can boil the reasoning down to a feeling of inadequacy. Children often feel like they don’t have anything positive going for themselves, so they have to invent something. Johnny may have felt that he didn’t have any friends because he wasn’t good at anything, or that he didn’t possess anything that other children his age would think was “cool.” The reality of Johnny’s reasoning was that he didn’t have any friends because his constant lies made him too obnoxious to be around. He was his own worse enemy in this vicious circle. The fewer friends he had, the more lies he told to get people to like him.
As Mom and Dad studied their child’s lying and low self-esteem, they decided upon a two-fold plan. First, they decided they would continue with the plan of forcing him to face the people he lied to. Second, these parents decided that Dad needed to set aside a specific amount of time each week to be with their son. If this constant lying was a signal that Johnny was lonely and felt valueless, Dad would help work on that problem. The time they spent together would be devoted to practicing sports, but it would also be a time when father and son would just be together.
Dad also would be with Johnny at bedtime each night. After helping Johnny with his prayers, this father decided he would stay in the boy’s room for fifteen more minutes and lie down on the bed with his son, talking softly, or just relaxing together. It would be a time for Dad to reinforce to his son that “Johnny is special.”
With this plan, the parents were able to deal with the behavior and establish a plan that would help the child feel better about himself do that he did not need to lie. A plan like this takes discipline on the parts of all parties involved. When he realized he faced the same consequence every time, Johnny would eventually learn to discipline himself to resist the temptation to lie. Mom and Dad would have to discipline themselves, too, to apply the same consequence every time. And they had to discipline their schedules to spend more one-on-one time with their child. The things that count in life always require out time.
What about the lie that signals little more that “I don’t want to get caught”? We’ll talk about that next month.