Children’s Lying Behavior: How to Deal with It

There are so many reasons why children lie. Lying does not begin in adulthood; instead, children’s lying behavior starts at a young age. Children lie when they feel the need to cover up something they did to avoid getting into trouble. For instance, when your child steals a candy, they lie and deny doing such a deed since they know they will get in trouble if they tell the truth.

How to deal with Children’s Lying Behavior

Besides this, children also lie to gauge your response when they lie to you. This means that sometimes your children lie to assess your response and thus, determine if they can continue lying in future. Sometimes, when children are with their peers and are storytelling, they tend to lie to make the story more exciting. They also make up things to better their image in front of their peers.

Additionally, the other reason that children’s lying behavior starts is that they desire to get your attention, more so, when they know you have not given them any attention. Thus, they will lie even when they know you know the truth. Another reason that they lie is when they know they cannot get what they want from you. Hence, they will lie to you to get what they want. They will say something like, “Mum lets me have candy before dinner,” or, “Dad lets me watch YouTube before I sleep.”

When do children lie?

Children’s lying behavior starts at an early age. They usually begin lying from around three to four years. At this age, your kid begins to realize that you cannot read minds. So at this time, your child starts to test your knowledge of realization of whether you can tell they are lying. So they will say things that are untrue to you. By the age of six, children lie even more. Thus, at this time, they become better at lying. Hence, they can match their facial expression with the tones in their voices. She will even get more confidence in telling lies. When the child reaches the school age, they not only lie more often but they also better their lying skills. Thus, their lies become more complicated since your child has more words to use and explore when lying but also has a better understanding of the way people reason. At this time, they become perfect liars who can get away with their lies at any time, any place and any day.

Four ways to make your child stop lying

1. Make your child stop lying or shun away from lying is through encouraging them to tell the truth always. Once they have grown older, they begin to have more understanding of the differences between the truth and lies. Thus, it is great to encourage them.

2. Support them to tell the truth. Through supporting them, your children will shun from lies.

3. You can succeed in this through laying great emphasis on the vitality of honesty in the family.

4. When your child practices honesty, then it is best to praise them, as this will get them to become more honest.