Lying is typically a way for the less-powerful to respond to the more-powerful, so most kids will lie. They’re smaller and less powerful than you and they need you to survive. They also love you and don’t want you mad at them, so yes, they lie. As a parent, this is a challenging situation. You want to be able to believe the words that come out of your children’s mouths. It’s natural not to trust people who lie to you and it’s disturbing not to be able to trust your own children.
It’s important for kids to learn that lying isn’t a great way to deal with life. They need integrity and they need others to see them this way. We don’t trust liars and sometimes this makes us not like them.
At the same time, as a parent you need to understand how lying works. It’s very natural for children–less powerful–to use this behavior to cope. Many parents are shocked and dismayed when their children, who they love and have often made sacrifices for, lie to them. This feels like a big breach of the relationship, but try to remember the child doesn’t typically mean it this way.
Children need to learn to see their choices and to be anchored in their personal power. Even though they often don’t see their choices, options are there. Like all of us, we don’t usually get the options we want, but we still get choices. Power lies in having choices. Kids have to learn how to handle this. They need to discover how to manage tough choices the same way we teach them to do math with fractions.
Lying doesn’t necessarily mean a big character flaw. It’s just a minimal coping strategy and we need to view it this way, while helping kids see their other options.
Sometimes we as adults fail to see children as people in their own right. We love them–sometimes madly–we just don’t always treat them like they have brains. Learning to really listen to your children is very important. Not everything they say will be accurate or fascinating–not everything we say is this, either. We still want to be heard. Adults are prompt to insist kids respect them, but we don’t always give them the same treatment.
There’s no denying that as the parent, you have more power and more choices. You get your way more often. It doesn’t sometimes feel like this to us parents, but this is the reality. Parenting is a massive, full-time, often consuming job. While it naturally involves being bigger and more powerful, it can suck.
But being a child isn’t always a picnic, either. We tend to paint childhood as blissful and blessed. Don’t kid yourself. Childhood can suck, too. We all need to recognize that along with the blessings of being a child, comes some serious expense. They are weaker and smaller. Not all kids have loving, thoughtful parents. We aren’t always loving and thoughtful ourselves, but from a child’s point-of-view, we’re all-powerful and we always get things our way.
From the parents’ point-of-view, this is comical.
So, kids lie. They do it to avoid punishment and parental anger. They need to learn better ways. It’s just one more thing you, as a parent, need to teach your kids.