How do I handle my child’s lying?

When a child lies, it can be really tricky for parents. Even overwhelming at times.

What’s the difference between a white lie and a serious one? How do I handle it if my kid keeps lying over and over? Can I ever lie to my child? 

On this episode of Parenting Behavior, host Dr. Andy Kahn will share information on why your child lies, what those lies are telling you, and how to help your child learn to tell the truth.

We’d love to hear from you. You can email us at ParentingBehavior@understood.org.

Related resources

• ADHD and lying: Why kids with ADHD might lie a lot

• Why does my child lie so much?

• 8 ways to help your grade-schooler with ADHD stop lying   

• Teens with ADHD and lying 

Timestamps

(00:46)  What do kids’ lies look like? 

(04:08)  How do I make sense of my kid’s lies? 

(07:41)  How can I help my child be more truthful? 

(13:06)  Why parents should admit their own mistakes

(17:25)  White lies vs. serious lies  

(19:11)  Is it ever OK to lie to your kid?

Episode transcript

Andy: When a child lies, it can be really tricky for parents. Figuring out how to handle these situations as a parent can be overwhelming at times. So, today you'll learn three things: why your child lies, what those lies are telling you, and how to help your child learn and tell the truth.

This is "Parenting Behavior" and I'm your host, Dr. Andy Kahn. I'm a parent and licensed psychologist with over 20 years experience working with kids and families with behavioral challenges. Today, we're gonna talk about what to do when your kid lies.

(00:46) What do kids' lies look like?

Let's first talk about what do kids' lies look like, and do they look different at different ages? For preschool-aged kids, lying actually develops in a pretty benign way. So, kids who are really young, were thinking about four or five years old, may start talking about things like storytelling. So, they might say something like, "Oh, we're having ice cream for dinner." For a lot of these kids, telling stories is a little bit about wish fulfillment. It's not really trying to deceive anyone, but they're using their imagination to talk about things that they would like to see happen.

Kids at that age need to be told that when they share things that aren't true, people stop believing them and don't think that what they're saying is meaningful or appropriate because they're making up stories that just aren't true. But obviously, this is not about deception. It's not a negative thing. It's just something that needs to be trained out. When kids use their imaginations to tell stories, it can be really engaging and get people's attention.

And remember, attention is really reinforcing to young kids. The challenge here is, when children use their imagination to tell stories, they're also saying things that aren't true. So, letting them know that in those situations, in a regular conversation, telling people lies is not appropriate. Give your child outlets for their creativity. Help them tell stories or write them down, or draw pictures. Use art and music, and other ways to express all their creativity, but not in a way that is dishonest and sharing things that actually aren't true with people during the course of conversation.

As kids get older, even kindergarten age, we may see some more intentional lying behaviors. Now, what does this look like? Well, kids may lie on purpose to do things like avoid consequences or to avoid feeling embarrassed. Kids may also do it to gain or hold someone's attention if they say something that interests someone. And in addition, they may do it test their parents' limits if they don't like what their parents are asking them to do and are trying to avoid certain activities. Finally, they might even imitate and lie like their parents do if they observe it in some environment.

Some other reasons why children lie might be to keep something private or not share something with other people. Sometimes lying allows them to get something they want. So, for example, if your child says, "Oh no, I didn't have a cookie, so they can get a cookie again later." Other times that children may lie might be for a benevolent reason, or to spare someone's feelings, to say something that isn't true to not make someone feel bad.

Ultimately, when children lie all the time or they're lying in situations that get them frequently into trouble, they may need to get some extra support, perhaps getting some counseling or other services. One thing to consider is that sometimes kids with learning and thinking differences like ADHD may be more prone to lying because their impulsivity and challenges in controlling what they say, isn't necessarily to do something negative, but it is something that happens with kids with learning or thinking differences.

Now, this doesn't happen with all kids with learning in thinking differences, but kids who are impulsive may show this behavior. Another thing you may see is kids who have ADHD might be compulsive truth tellers. They might be very rigid about rules and information and get very upset when something that someone shares isn't exactly what happened. So, keep in mind, those thinking differences can affect how your kids see the truth.

In addition, kids with ADHD may be prone to elaborating and building out stories with other details and information from things that didn't happen because they like the idea of maintaining your attention. So, keep in mind, learning and thinking differences can affect people tell the truth.

(04:08) How do I make sense of my kid's lies?

How do you make sense of your kids' lies and get them on the track for improving their behavior? There's a few things you really wanna keep in mind in this situation. First and foremost, consider why your child is telling a lie in the first place. If they're trying to avoid some consequence or trying to stay out of trouble, this may not be an effort to be doing something negative. They're just being self-protective. Oftentimes, kids aren't doing this to defy you, but rather they're trying to cope and navigate a situation that they just can't manage on their own.

Ultimately, they may want to hide or undo something that they've done because they're impulsive or have had challenges in doing what is expected of them in certain situations. One of the reasons that kids tend to lie is they're struggling with something. Now, I'll give you a couple of examples from my childhood. One of the most common lies I used to tell as a kid was I didn't have any homework today. As a kid with ADHD, I struggled to pay attention. I didn't always know what was expected of me. So, coming home and having to do that work felt unmanageable. So, saying I didn't have homework was a great escape for me.

Second key strategy I used, and it's a little bit dated, is the idea of saying, "Oh, I don't have my book today. I can't do my work." We use a lot less textbooks today in school, but in many cases, having at least a copy of the assignment or a second book at home is a great workaround for this. Keep in mind, again, this is about there's a function here. If a child feels they can't do something or it's too hard, they may lie to escape that activity.

Keep in that when a kid lies about tasks or activities, often what's happening is they may not have the skills or the knowledge to know what to do. Very commonly, kids who have challenges with executive function may not know how to organize, plan, and do those multi-step activities. So, rather than saying, "I don't know how to do this" or "I need help," they'll lie about the activity to try to escape from it. So, getting them help is a great way to eventually navigate towards getting them to tell the truth or to advocate for themselves when they need it.

Another common reason for lying comes from a place of shame. When kids can't do things or are failing in activities repeatedly, they will often lie and try to avoid and escape from those tasks. This is something that's really challenging because the lying behavior becomes the focus, not the skill your child doesn't have. If we think about kids who have trouble controlling their behavior, like kids with ADHD, their cycle of misbehavior leads to a lot of making mistakes and wanting to avoid having being responsible for those behaviors. So, there's lots of reasons that we want to think about what skills a child doesn't have.

In addition to how they advocate for themselves to get the things they need, lying behavior keeps us locked in a vicious cycle. And until we can teach children skills to navigate that, we will see more and more lying behavior. Now in my clinical practice, parents will often share with me that their children have a fear of consequences or a fear of punishment. And this leads to a lot more lying behavior because when they make mistakes, they don't wanna be called out or be yelled at by their parents. So, how can you tell the difference between a typical fear of punishment versus a punishment phobia?

For kids who have punishment phobia, their reactions are oversized, meaning they overreact to situations where they weren't likely to get punished in the first place. Or they're ruminating and worrying about being punished during situations that have nothing to do with their behavior. Those kids show impairments in that they're struggling to do activities in other parts of their daily life. Typical kids, or should I say neurotypical kids, or kids who don't have this phobia, may just react to the fear of immediate punishment or consequences. It's not something that is thematic across their day.

(07:41) How can I help my child be more truthful?

What do I do to manage my child's lies and help them create more truthful behavior? Well, first, it's super important to understand why the behavior is happening. If you overreact and give really strong consequences, the child is likely to continue to lie because they don't have any way to get out of that vicious cycle with you. More often than not, the goal is to figure out what is that child avoiding or escaping from? What are the things that child needs to learn in order to navigate the situations they're avoiding and escaping from? That will get you on the track to helping them tell the truth more often.

As I said a few moments ago, what's really common for kids is they're gonna want to escape and avoid things that make them feel ashamed or embarrassed. These are things that really feel terrible for kids, not being able to do things. As an ADHD kid myself back in the day, embarrassment was one of the number one motivators for me, either for escaping from activities or lying about them. If we think about what we need to do, we need to think about a handful of things first. Are there executive function challenges that your child has? Can we break tasks down to help them navigate things that are hard for them?

Rather than just demanding that they do them or consequence them for not doing an assignment or not cleaning the room properly, what we can do is help them break things out. Let's use the example of cleaning their room. If your child is consistently saying, "Yes, I cleaned my room" and throwing things in a closet or saying they cleaned the room when they did nothing, the best workaround here is not necessarily to give them a consequence, but to go into that room with them and create a list.

What are the activities that need to be done? Does your child know how to do those activities? And if not, can you do that with them so they can learn step-by-step what's expected of them? Remember, a lot of what happens with lying is kids feeling overwhelmed or that they don't know what to do in order to meet your expectations. Teaching them concretely what to do can help them be less avoidant and engage in those tasks.

The one trap here is that if a child finds that room cleaning takes way too long, what you may want to do is just set a timer. "We're going to do room cleaning activities for 15 minutes," so, cutting that activity down to a manageable, successful period so your child can do what's expected of them and then get away before they get overwhelmed.

Another strategy, particularly for older kids, is to have conversations about why they're lying. So, for example, if your child said to you, "Yeah, I did that science assignment," and you find out two days later, they didn't, they got a zero on it. Instead of just immediately launching into a consequence, have a conversation. "Hey, why wasn't that assignment done? What was hard about it?" And go into problem-solving mode with that child. Remember, they feel ashamed when they don't know what they need to do, or if they don't know how to advocate for themselves.

As a parent, catching your child in a lie can feel like a parenting win at times, like, "Oh, I found out what they're doing." But in actuality, you just found a symptom. You didn't find out the core of why the behavior was happening. So remember, if you catch your child in a line, hold yourself back for a second. Don't jump right into consequence mode. Try to take some moments to find out, "OK, why didn't you do that science assignment? Is there something that's hard about it? Are there things that you need support in order to do this better?" And try to think about what is happening with your child that's leading to that behavior.

There's so many traps built into parenting, particularly around lying, but learning from your child, asking them what they need can be really helpful. Uncovering the reasons that your child is lying is a multi-step process, and oftentimes it's really important to figure out, "Were there certain things your child wasn't able to do that led to lying?" So much of what we do is trying to have those conversations. But sometimes if your child's unable to have these conversations or is refusing to talk to you in those situations, you may need to get some extra support.

Seeking counseling services can be a great way to generate skills for your child and help them to be able to get the language and learn to self-advocate around situations that keep getting you trapped in those parenting battles. One great strategy is to offer your child an opportunity to revise their story if you know you've caught them in a lie. Giving kids a chance to step away and take a breath can give them a nice opportunity to say, "Hey, we can navigate away from this. It takes work and it takes intention to change these automatic behaviors."

Kids who are anxious or feel ashamed very easily are very likely to jump into lying behaviors right away. So, giving them that chance by not consequencing them right away to think about what they're doing, to learn a new way to communicate, can be really helpful. For some parents, they can do this by reducing consequences in exchange for changing your story and telling the truth. For some parents, this is really difficult because the kid's automatic lying behavior can make us really frustrated and angry. But ultimately, any behavior is gonna take time to change and we've got to give kids a chance to tweak their behavior and learn over time that we're not gonna overreact. And sometimes that's hard for us.

To be clear, you don't excuse the lie. What we're trying to do is use the knowledge of the lie as an opportunity for a conversation and to change behavior. For so many kids, this is the starting point for trying something different. Remember, lying is actually rewarded oftentimes. If they do something they shouldn't and they deny it, they don't get a consequence right away. So, they're able to maintain some positive feeling or avoidance of something negative. It's only later when they get caught that it's a problem. So, giving kids information, giving them the opportunity to share what they know.

(13:06) Why parents should admit their own mistakes

One of the things that can be super helpful as a parent is to admit to your child when you've made mistakes. Admitting to your children that you make mistakes is an everyday parenting strategy. Our kids often see us as somewhat perfect or infallible, that we don't make mistakes. When in actuality, we make plenty of mistakes, we just probably don't talk about them because like our kids, we might be embarrassed or not happy that we did something incorrect.

Taking ownership, sharing with your child when you make mistakes, and showing the plan for how you're going to improve is a great way to show them that we don't have to lie about the things that aren't going well. We just have to take responsibility and choose new paths. For kids to see these models can be really powerful. When your child makes mistakes, be empathic and supportive. This way, they don't have to feel that deep feeling of shame. They can feel that you're gonna be supportive of them, which is a good way to get them to be more honest with you about the things that aren't going well in their lives. And you can be on board to help them learn new strategies and be more successful.

If your child has continued issues with lying, there are some strategies you can use to help them stop. So, for example, set expectations for work with your child. Rather than just having this persistent, there's no homework battle and trying to chase down information, close that gap at school. Get their assignments sent home, have communication with the teacher, and then, when you have that opportunity, break tasks down in a manageable fashion. Set timers for brief periods and allow them to do the unpleasant tasks, and then afterwards do something they prefer.

So much of this is about a lack of strategy and skill in your kids. So being able to connect those dots is really important. In addition, remember, it's important to give your child reward and opportunity when they share something positive that's honest to feel like, "Hey, this was a good job. Thank you for sharing that," and reward them with more time and attention. When kids can share what's not going well with you, the chance to solve it and give them opportunities to feel good about themselves grows significantly because you can actually help.

When kids lie, avoid, and escape, it's very hard to help because you don't know exactly what's going on. If your child has persistent issues with lying, here's some strategies to help get them to stop. First and foremost, setting expectations that are appropriate for your child. If there's something academic that's hard for them and they're lying about it on a day-to-day basis, keep in mind that if you get information and learn how to break those tasks down with them, you can start to take away some of that pressure.

Rather than letting them have the opportunity to lie, get those assignments directly from school. Set up a time-limited period for them to work on it, and then take them out of the activity so they can do something else that they prefer. For kids who have the opportunity to avoid an escape, they're probably going to. So, give them those strategies to navigate and manage things that are hard for them. In addition, think about reinforcing your child for sharing when things are difficult for them, if they're honest about what didn't go well or a mistake that they made, put extra time and attention to saying, "Wow, that must've been difficult. I appreciate that you just told me about something you didn't like or something that didn't go well. Can I help you figure out how to make that better?"

These are great strategies for helping kids to be more honest and more engaged with us rather than avoiding and escaping. One thing that's really important to consider is that lying happens. And when lying happens, there does need to be a consequence. If your child comes home from school and says, "Yes, I did my assignment already," and they go and take their screen time, and you find out that same evening that they didn't do their work, taking away that screen time, giving them a consequence is completely appropriate.

The thing you want to consider, though, is did they lie about the assignment because they don't know what they're doing, or they didn't get the instruction the way they needed it? This is a great opportunity to try to solve that problem. Having a conversation with the teacher about "Can they do that work in school? Can they go back for some extra help so they can do the assignment appropriately?" is gonna be the best add-on to that consequence.

Remember, the barrier or the thing that caused the behavior wasn't necessarily the child wanted to make you upset, but maybe they felt they couldn't do the activity. So, having connections with teachers or others who can provide the instruction can be a great way to navigate away from these challenges. The consequence of taking away TV would not be nearly enough for a kid with a learning and thinking difference. They need to learn the skill of how to do the work, not just to tell you the truth about it.

(17:25) White lies vs. serious lies

So, let's talk about the difference between some serious lies and white lies. First, let's talk a little bit about white lies. White lies are things that most people do every day without really thinking about it. I'll give you an example. If you had a lousy morning, and at midday you run into someone and say, "Hey, how are you today?" You say, "Oh, fine, how're you?" This moment is a white lie. You're not telling them the details of what wasn't going well in your day. And ultimately, our kids see this, and this can be a little confusing to them.

Teaching them about white lies are about situations where you might say something that isn't entirely true for the purpose of just greeting someone or not sharing something that would really hurt someone's feelings that isn't necessary. In the situation of telling more serious lies, this is a totally different situation. Kids who tell serious lies about things that are dangerous or at risk to their health are things that require pretty significant intervention right away, and solving that problem may require an immediate and strong consequence, and time to take to figure out what your child actually needs. I'll give you an example.

A child who lies about going in a car with somebody who drives unsafely or going to a household where there is no parent supervision, and the kids are engaged in dangerous and unsupervised behavior. In those situations, immediate consequences and restrictions are typically appropriate. "No, you cannot drive with that person," or "You don't have permission to go to that person's house." These situations, where you cut off access, are there for keeping that child safe.

You can do more investigation and build skill over time, but those serious situations need immediate intervention. We can't really take a lot of time to figure out the motivation and reasons behind it. Keep the child safe, figure out the details later.

(19:11) Is it ever OK to lie to your kid?

So, this is a tough one. We're gonna talk about "Is it OK to lie to your own kids?" This is a really complicated question. And my best answer to most parents is that we share information with our children at what is age-appropriate for them and what is developmentally appropriate for them. So, we avoid really complicated conversations and oftentimes things about severe illness or the horrible things sometimes that happen in the world from our very young kids. If they can't conceptualize it, and safely understand it, that's information we might restrict from them. So, we stay very vague and stay away from details.

Another thing to consider is that when your child asks you about this, being able to know what to say. And you say, "You know what? This is an adult conversation. It's something you're not ready for, and it's not appropriate for you." And that makes kids upset, but it is a very, very meaningful and appropriate thing to say when you're now gonna share a detail that they can't handle.

Another thing they keep in mind is that there are certain topics that families might bring up with their kids that are very commonly lied about, things like Santa Claus. And when our kids find out that Santa Claus isn't a specific person, they get extremely upset. One really great piece of advice is that sharing with your kids about the concept and idea of Santa can be really helpful. And there's some great online articles about this. The concept of gift-giving and the spirit of Christmas can be very helpful. Obviously, this doesn't affect all families. But it's something we see a lot here in American culture.

Thanks for listening to this episode of "Parenting Behavior with Dr. Andy Kahn." We'd love to hear from you if you have any thoughts on the show. You can email us at parentingbehavior@understood.org. I'll put the email in the show notes too, where you can also find more resources and links to anything we mentioned.

"Parenting Behavior with Dr Andy Kahn" is brought to you by Understood.org. It's produced and edited by Cody Nelson. Editorial guidance by Gail Belsky. Music and Mixing by Justin D. Wright. Our video producers are Calvin Knie and Christophe Manuel. Special thanks to Dr. Karen Wilson. Briana Berry is our production director, and Neil Drumming is our editorial director. Our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Seth Melnick.

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