Every child is going to lie. Parents need to know that.  But there are things parents can do to prevent lying from becoming  a chronic problem.

Paul Ekman, a leading authority on lying and the pioneer of the study  of micro-emotions, wrote a book on this subject called Why Kids Lie: How Parents Can Encourage the Truth.

His book opens with these questions  from concerned parents:

“My son Billy lied to me and he’s only five. Is that normal?”

“I know Joanne is lying when she tells me she doesn’t smoke pot, but I can’t prove it. What should I do?”

“Michael lies all the time. Will he outgrow it?”

“Heather won’t tell me what she does on her dates. She says it’s none of my business, but don’t I have a right to know?  I’m only trying to protect her.”

“When my kid lies, I worry that there’s something I’m doing that makes her lie.”

Parents often respond to discovering their child has lied to them with a mix of emotions: anger, disappointment, denial, betrayal, self-blame and a sense of failure as a parent.

In the epilogue of his book,  Ekman’s sums up his advice on what to do when we suspect our child is lying to us.  He says: ( this is an abridged version, re-presented in list form)

Try not to respond with anger…  (Earlier in the book, Ekman described how he dealt with discovering his 13-year-old son Tom secretly had thrown a party while his parents were away.  This is how Ekman dealt with the confrontation with Tom.[Ekman speaking]“I’m very upset,” I said. I could feel the heat in my face, and I struggled to keep my temper. “I just learned you gave a party behind our backs last week and lied to me about it.”

He [Tom]  looked stunned, and seeing the guilt and panic on his face took away my anger. I suddenly felt sorry for him and for me, for I remembered in that moment what it was like to be his age and caught in a lie.  “I don’t want to talk to you  about it tonight, “ I told him in an even voice. “I need time to think it over, but this is very serious. I want you to think about it, and to be ready to explain tomorrow morning what you did and what you think your mother and I should do about it.”

I knew from past experience that Tom is the type of kid who always concocts the most severe draconian penalties for his misdeeds — worse than any his mother and I could ever come up with. I thught it would be good for him to worry about it and to consider what it meant. It would also give me time to think it through and be more certain that my anger would not return. (p 4)

Try to understand why the lie is occurring, the motive for lying.  Very often that understanding will allow you to talk to your child in a way that will allow the child to be trthful, which will eliminate the child’s motive for lying…

Try, as difficult as it may seem, to see the world from your child’s point of view…

Be on your child’s side. Show forgiveness. Remember what it was like when you were a child.  That doesn’t  mean  giving up your rules or standards, but it does mean understanding rather than always punishing any infraction. And, as your child grows older,  it means being willing to discuss or negotiate the rules you live by as a family.Such understanding does not mean you won’t sometimes also be angry about what your child has done. Children sometimes do very bad things that disappoint and anger us, and it is important that they know that. But even when a child has done something terrible, such as hurting another child or stealing, the parent’s disapproval can be mixed with compassion. A road back to self-respect must be allowed, humiliation avoided.  A terrible act, a desperate lie to conceal it, needs to be punished, but it also needs to be forgiven.

 Sometimes parents suspect lying even though the child is being truthful. When a truthful child is disbelieved, the damage can be severe…When parents encournter such situations in which there is no way to find out the truth, they have a choice about which kind of mistake they wnt to risk. If they are trusting and accept their child’s word, they risk being exploited and deceived if they were wrong. If they are suspcious and distrusting, they risk disbelieving a trhthful child if they were wrong, and that  I believe is more damaging. Our child then can no longer count on us, and that loss can be severe. The anger it breeds in the child may motivate the lies the suspicious parent had hoped to avoid

…It may be useful to think that sometimes children lie to us because they don’t trust us, they are not certain that they can be truthful to us without being hassled or punished.  Parents should not give up their beliefs in what is right, but they must also treat their children in a way that lets them know they can be trusted with the truth. Parents start with their children’s trust, but as the child grows older, they must earn it. (p181-184)