Is lying "normal"?

[traveltheworld]

DS is 10 and generally a pretty good kid.  But we've caught him in a number of lies over the past few weeks: 1. cheated repeatedly in a card game (over a span of weeks - it took us a long time to figure out how he was winning every game); 2. took his own allowance money to school to buy Pokemon cards from a friend, then lied about what he was using that money for when I accidently found it in his bag; 3. discovered the iPad screen lock password and sneaked more iPad time in. 

While I'm disappointed, I didn't think it was all that abnormal for the age.  DH, who really is the most honest person on the planet, thinks it's a huge issue and we need some additional intervention.  I'm not sure if I'm under-reacting or if he is over-reacting...

[sandandsea]

Totally normal and age appropriate. Also warrants a discussion on lying and crying wolf and why it’s so wrong and breaks trust and you have to earn that back.

[mommyatty]

I agree. Totally age appropriate AND you have to nip it in the bud.

[rere]

I'd say normal, but we took a pretty hard line on lying and had consequences. Usually grounded from technology or something along those lines.

[CrazyLucky]

Totally normal. We used to tease DS that he was just like his uncle because my brother cheated at Uno any time he could get away with it. The most frequent lies in my house are in regards to completing chores and brushing teeth. I don't know why they lie about finishing chores, it's pretty easy to figure that one out.

[waverly]

Pretty normal. I try to call him out so that he knows he your going to get caught. He's got a sneaky personality which I had at that age. He will outgrow it. We try to punish harder for lying, but most of the lies are more like oh I washed my hands, hands are bone dry, no you did not. Go wash your hands.

[chilerellanos]

Normal. AND it needs dealt with.

[ECB]

Yup. Ditto everyone else- it's normal AND it needs to be dealt with. I've had many talks with DS about the "little boy who cried wolf" story!

[traveltheworld]

Thanks everyone. I guess we just found it odd - like the Pokemon thing, not sure why he thought he had to hide it from us; we genuinely give him free rein on how he spends his money; so if he was going to spend $50 to buy 3 cards, we wouldn't have said anything.

We did hand out consequences.

[waverly]

This is timely, DS asked me why no one believes him, and I said it is because he has been lying so much. That people will believe him when he is 100% truthful. I told him a story of when I lied and got caught by a friend and after that didn't lie as much.  This was when I was a child and going through the lying stage.  

One example is that he was working on his homework, but our question was why wasn't math done when he had an hour to do math and science. He said that science took longer, but DD and DH say that he was watching You Tube videos and not doing work. I think both is true. I think he did some cursory science stuff and watched You Tube videos. But DH thinks he is lying because he sent him to do homework until it was complete, and then when I get home an hour later oh lo and behold it is not complete. DS would tell me it is, but then I ask to see the score on his Chromebook, so he has to be honest about math because I ask to see it.  In the past he has said it is complete and math is, but the percent right is not high enough for the teacher to accept, so I have to ask about the percent now.  It is a lot of managing but with starting middle school, the pandemic, and low executive function, I am not ready to be like oh just fail.  And who do the teachers call when he is failing? oh me.  

But anyway, we had a whole conversation during the car ride about the consequences of lying and one of them is that everyone has to double check everything because of all the lying.   And we don't believe him.  I told him trust has to be earned.  We'll see if the conversation helped, but it was the first one about the actual adult consequences of lying as opposed to oh you lost screen time.  It tied the consequence in directly for him that in society people who lie are not believed.  I thought about this question during the conversation.  

[mommyatty]

Feb 2, 2023 12:51:54 GMT -5 traveltheworld said:

Thanks everyone. I guess we just found it odd - like the Pokemon thing, not sure why he thought he had to hide it from us; we genuinely give him free rein on how he spends his money; so if he was going to spend $50 to buy 3 cards, we wouldn't have said anything.

We did hand out consequences.

DD earlier this week told us she hadn’t gotten her math test back. She did get her math test back but she was ashamed she got a bad score on the test (a D), but she got a B- for the unit because her homework grades were good. She has literally never gotten in trouble for a bad grade. When I asked why she lied, she said because she was afraid she would get in trouble. We asked when in the past she’s gotten in trouble. Never. So why did she think she would? She doesn’t know. It’s maddening. I even said “You know we have to sign your unit summary so we were going to see it. What good did you think it would do to put it off? You just caused yourself more anxiety because you didn’t just rip off the bandaid and tell us.” But I am 100% sure she will do it again. We are going to have to start punishing her for it.

[rere]

This reminds me of the time Ds tried to hide his bad grades. Their folders for the class had a folder inside a folder. He took a couple he got a D on and put it between the 2 folders and thought we couldn't find it. It was a little bulky because he wadded them up. He never was very slick. We also had the conversation that you can't really hide bad grades, it all come out in the end.

[traveltheworld]

Feb 3, 2023 12:27:27 GMT -5 mommyatty said:

Feb 2, 2023 12:51:54 GMT -5 traveltheworld said:

Thanks everyone. I guess we just found it odd - like the Pokemon thing, not sure why he thought he had to hide it from us; we genuinely give him free rein on how he spends his money; so if he was going to spend $50 to buy 3 cards, we wouldn't have said anything.

We did hand out consequences.

DD earlier this week told us she hadn’t gotten her math test back. She did get her math test back but she was ashamed she got a bad score on the test (a D), but she got a B- for the unit because her homework grades were good. She has literally never gotten in trouble for a bad grade. When I asked why she lied, she said because she was afraid she would get in trouble. We asked when in the past she’s gotten in trouble. Never. So why did she think she would? She doesn’t know. It’s maddening. I even said “You know we have to sign your unit summary so we were going to see it. What good did you think it would do to put it off? You just caused yourself more anxiety because you didn’t just rip off the bandaid and tell us.” But I am 100% sure she will do it again. We are going to have to start punishing her for it.

The "why would you lie" part was puzzling for us too.  I always thought we were very reasonable and set pretty reasonable rules, so the lying about things that he wouldn't get in trouble for is puzzling.

[sillygoosegirl]

I saw a Ted talk a while back about how virtually all kids lie, but a lot of parents think their kids don't lie, or think they can tell when their own kids are lying (spoiler: both sets of parents are wrong). Rarely am I aware of my daughter lying, but I try not to kid myself about that meaning anything.