Appropriate Punishment for Lying?

[Anonymous]

I agree with the earlier punishment that you get x for doing what you were not supposed to do and an additional 2x for lying about it.

As a guy I can tell you that the amount of lying is about to increase. The way my parents could tell I was lying 70% of the time was that my mouth was moving.

You are going to have to pick your moments to make an impact. My parents tried to bust me on every lie, but I learned from my mistakes (e.g. don't add water to the bottle of vodka (which they did drink) to get it back to the marked line, instead add water an anise extract to the bottle of Sambuca at the back of the liquor cabinet).

[Anonymous]

i would explain carefully to my kid that if he was honest with me off the bat, we could calmly come to a resolution. grounding him won't change his thought process, OP. limiting his access to technology that he likes will make him more desperate to have it (and find sneaky ways to do so). moderation is key. if you can meet somewhere in the middle without displaying anger, he will be MUCH less likely to lie in the first place.

[Anonymous]

Pepper on the tongue

[Anonymous]

Pepper works use it

[Anonymous]

2.5 year old thread!

[Anonymous]

what can i do to make a punishment for the kids make them write 200 times I WILL NOT LIE!!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous]

So... all this is good and stuff, but what if your children lie like 20 times a day about all different things?

[Anonymous]

what is DS?

[Anonymous]

Agree with the fact that it undermines your trust in him. I don't believe that punishment is the answer or that it will be effective in the long run. Ditto with lecturing. But if you take the remote with you to work, for example (and casually mention why when he asks for it later - "since you weren't able to police yourself on this last week I figured I might need to do it for you this week. I know it's hard to do but I'm confident that you'll get there soon.") Then he can give HIMSELF a little lecture. You don't need to say or do anything more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agree with the fact that it undermines your trust in him. I don't believe that punishment is the answer or that it will be effective in the long run. Ditto with lecturing. But if you take the remote with you to work, for example (and casually mention why when he asks for it later - "since you weren't able to police yourself on this last week I figured I might need to do it for you this week. I know it's hard to do but I'm confident that you'll get there soon.") Then he can give HIMSELF a little lecture. You don't need to say or do anything more.

This is the sort of thing I do. I tell my kids that I'm happy to give them as much freedom and responsibility as they can handle and it's up to them to show me how much that is. It is amazing how they rise to the occasion.

[Anonymous]

My dad was a high school teacher for 30 years. He always says, "Never ask a kid to lie to you." By that he means: don't ask questions you already know the answer to. I don't know if this applies in this case, but perhaps something to think about going forward. If you know your kid played the Wii or did something else he shouldn't have done, don't ask him. *Tell* him you know he broke a rule and go from there.

I think you've gotten some good advice above, but I will just emphasize that ALL kids lie sometimes, so don't get too bogged down worrying about your child's personal ethics. Just stick to the facts: lying breaks trust and therefore can't be tolerated in personal relationships. Sometimes lying seems like the easy way out, but in the long run it is detrimental to the relationship. I think a lot of parents get all tied up with the morality of lying when really most lying kids do is just to make things easier/better in the very short term. Not materially different from deciding not to do one's homework and not thinking about the longer term consequences. Our job is to get them to recognize the long-term benefits of being trustworthy, and to act now to reap those rewards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree with the fact that it undermines your trust in him. I don't believe that punishment is the answer or that it will be effective in the long run. Ditto with lecturing. But if you take the remote with you to work, for example (and casually mention why when he asks for it later - "since you weren't able to police yourself on this last week I figured I might need to do it for you this week. I know it's hard to do but I'm confident that you'll get there soon.") Then he can give HIMSELF a little lecture. You don't need to say or do anything more.

This is the sort of thing I do. I tell my kids that I'm happy to give them as much freedom and responsibility as they can handle and it's up to them to show me how much that is. It is amazing how they rise to the occasion.

This. If he can't be trusted, you will have to act accordingly. Taking the remote is the perfect consequence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not sure where the last two posters are coming from, but I'm definitely in the camp with those who take this stuff seriously. Our kids are in college, high school and middle school, and we've been through this many times -- fortunately with less frequency as the kids have gotten older, but, yeah, kids do lie to their parents (as we did to our parents). Even knowing that it happens, however, you have to take it seriously. I agree with the poster who said punishment should be more severe for lying than for the underlying (no pun intended) offense. As kids got older, we also used the approach the PP suggested that the consequence for lying was to have us hold back our trust in other areas -- so, for example, if you lie about playing Wii after school, we can't trust you when you say you're going to a friend's house -- you'll need to call us from the friend's home to verify that you are where you said you'd be. Along with punishment, though, there needs to be some discussion (try not to lecture) about how every relationship depends on trust. We have asked our kids to consider what life would be like if they couldn't trust us, their teachers, coaches, and other people in their lives. In the long run, that may have made the biggest impact on them.

This is basically our approach--lying = we can't trust you, and your life is much better if we can trust you. We have a friend whose son started lying a lot (about little things) and after he'd had this talk a few times, he just started lying to his son (about small things). When his son complained, he pointed out that the family operates a lot better when they could trust each other, and he said you could see the light bulb go off over his head. Not sure that would work for all kids, but it's worth considering.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My dad was a high school teacher for 30 years. He always says, "Never ask a kid to lie to you." By that he means: don't ask questions you already know the answer to. I don't know if this applies in this case, but perhaps something to think about going forward. If you know your kid played the Wii or did something else he shouldn't have done, don't ask him. *Tell* him you know he broke a rule and go from there.

I think you've gotten some good advice above, but I will just emphasize that ALL kids lie sometimes, so don't get too bogged down worrying about your child's personal ethics. Just stick to the facts: lying breaks trust and therefore can't be tolerated in personal relationships. Sometimes lying seems like the easy way out, but in the long run it is detrimental to the relationship. I think a lot of parents get all tied up with the morality of lying when really most lying kids do is just to make things easier/better in the very short term. Not materially different from deciding not to do one's homework and not thinking about the longer term consequences. Our job is to get them to recognize the long-term benefits of being trustworthy, and to act now to reap those rewards.

Your dad's advice is actually borne out by the research. THere's a chapter in *NurtureShock* about kids' lying, and one of the insights is that all kids lie, and it's developmentally normal. They often lie because they don't want to disappoint you, so they give you the answer they think you want, even if it's not the truth, so the best strategy is to emphasize that lying is more disappointing to you than the underlying offense. I think it was that book as well that talked about not setting kids up to fail--i.e., don't ask them questions you know the answer to. Just say that you know they broke the rule and address that issue.

[Anonymous]

My generally very good 11 y.o. DD lied to me yesterday about the damn iPad. Said she wasn't using it. Thought it was downstairs. Don't know where it is. I texted it. Bing! on the other side of her bed. Looked at it and she had last been on it right before I entered her room.

The thing is, I didn't care so much that she was on it, it was the boldface lie to my face and stupid fake house search, and I gave her plenty of ways out of it (because I suspected she was on it because she wasn't ready for bed yet) but no…she had to go down that path.

So you are not alone!