When Your Kids Lie or Helping Kids Deal with Dishonesty Trauma.

My daughter is about as smart and responsible as a dad could hope of his five year would be. I was shocked last evening when I found her bawling in the bathroom. I mean, she was like Noodad-with-a-hangnail-bawling! She just told me that she brushed her teeth and my wife told her that she did not do a good enough job. I guess she took of whiff of her breath and it reminded her of Cujo or something. I thought my sweet little innocent princess was bawling because she is a little bit sensitive about having to do things over. The truth was that she lied about brushing her teeth in the first place. That little rat! Furthermore, this was not the first time she lied to me about brushing her teeth! Innocence lost already? Not quite. After a three hour search of her room, I did not find any marijuana, Pokemon cards, alcohol, firearms, cigarettes, spare ribs or chewing tobacco.

She knows that brushing her little choppers is really important. She also knows that telling the truth is important. Seems there was a problem with her toothpaste being stuck in the tube and rather than ask us to fix it, she was just deciding not to brush her teeth. Or she would use her little brother’s training toothpaste if she decided to brush at all.

This kind of stuff build up in well-behaved, well disciplined kids. If you have taught your kids right from wrong, this sort of thing will build up on them over time. They carry it around like a burden and the more they lie, the more it builds up. So how can we prevent this from happening?

• Give your kids responsibilities, but make sure you actually check up on them.
• Do not always take their word, especially if it seems odd. I’m not saying do not trust them, just make sure that the answer they give you is the right answer.
• Do not have unrealistic expectations. Temper your expectations of kids by their age
• If you do catch your kid in a lie, make sure you tell them how important it is to tell the truth. Tell them that even though you may be disappointed when they do something wrong, you still love them and that things will be better if they tell the truth

What do your kids lie about? How do you know?