Reply to 12 Year Old Son Constantly Lies

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]give him more space. isn't this an age when we all started to lie more to our parents? [/quote]

:roll:  Of course it's that age. But that doesn't mean parents check out and stop being parents.

It's your job as a parent. Even more, he needs and wants, yes wants, his parents to care enough to continue setting boundaries. Ex-DH checked out and left all the hard parenting to me. My now 18-year-old has thanked me many, many times for caring enough to parent him when he was a pre-teen, and he's complained every few weeks that Ex-DH wasn't what he calls a "role model." I never encourage that talk. But this says to me that even teens still want parental guidance, even if they'd die before telling you.[/quote]

NP. Maybe some kids do want/need that. But other kids really do want their parents to back off, and would be fine if they did so. That's all I wanted as a teen and now, looking back as an adult raising teens of my own, that's still exactly what I wish my parents had done. I was capable of more or less handling myself by about age 14, and my mother's micromanaging was not necessary, desired, or helpful in any way. I was also a compulsive liar when I was younger; it started when I was a kid and was a habit I had to really work to break as a young adult. Sure, part of the reason was for the thrill of getting away with it and the excitement of being able to make up stories that were 'better' than my real life, but a huge contributor was that I was never good enough at home and rarely permitted to make my own decisions about anything. I would lie as a reflex to avoid getting in trouble with angry parents when I fell short of their standards or had asserted too much independence.

Every kid's needs will be slightly different, as will approaches that work for different families, but being overly controlling can certainly contribute to the sort of situation where kids form a habit of lying.[/quote]

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