Children's lies. To us adults, she seems so simple-minded and naive. But the reasons that a child begins to lie to his parents cannot be called harmless or insignificant. Does your child fantasize and pass these fantasies off as reality? Or is he telling lies, trying to hide some of his actions and actions from your watchful attention? How to stop a child from lying? Do not rush to expose the toddler and punish him. After all, if we approach the problem from the point of view of psychologists, then, rather, educational work should be carried out, first, with the parents themselves. So that they do not mistakenly begin to fight the investigation, which, in essence, is a lie. But we tried to understand the reasons that prompt children to resort to such an unpopular way of getting out of situations that are uncomfortable for them.
Children lie to their parents because for some reason they feel uncomfortable in their world.
The child is lying: advice from a psychologist
So, what is a lie for a child?
- This is a balm for mental wounds.
- This is an internal conflict that has found a way out.
- This is a lifeline in a seemingly hopeless situation.
And what are children's lies for parents?
- This is a distress signal.
- This is a call for help.
- This is an indicator that in the world of your beloved baby, not everything is as good as it might seem to you at first glance.
No matter how sad it may sound for you, the fact that the baby began to lie to you indicates a crisis of trust in your relationship. And it is you, the parents, who need to look for ways out of this crisis, as the more experienced, balanced, authoritative ones.
Children lie when they stop trusting their loved ones
Do not rush to expose your child in a lie and scold him for unacceptable behavior. Try to understand why the baby felt the need to tell you a lie. After all, often, the reasons for children’s lies are not at all those that are visible to you upon superficial examination.
You will not find a single recipe for solving this problem. Everyone will have their own. Depending on the problems of mutual understanding that have arisen between you and your child.
A crisis of trust between parents and children occurs when the older generation chooses the wrong model of relationships and not entirely correct tactics for raising their children.
The baby will not lie to you if his life flows calmly and measuredly, if everything is in order with him. And you shouldn’t think that he allows himself to tell you lies because the little one doesn’t love or respect you.
Try to understand what is really behind his lies. What particular need is the baby trying to satisfy in this way? This will be the answer to the question: “How to wean a child from lying?”
Children lie when they are afraid of punishment and reproach.
Types of children's lies
A lie is a consciously expressed statement that does not coincide with the truth in advance. This is the deliberate transmission of distorted information to another person for the purpose of obtaining some benefit. [1]
“My son is 7 years old. He always liked to “make up” different stories. And if earlier fables looked like fantasies, now they can be called a serious deception. The child began to lie often and for any reason. I seriously thought about his behavior after a recent incident. I woke up the child to get ready for school. After a couple of minutes, the son began to cry and try to persuade him not to go to class. At first I was scared - what happened? The child replied that the teacher, when he does not “cope” with the copybooks, slaps his hands. That day we stayed at home and then went on sick leave. After discharge, I was going to go to school to find out about the teacher’s unacceptable behavior. While we were sitting at home, we somehow brought up this topic with our son, and he admitted that he had lied to me. I was upset, I didn’t know how to react and what to do. His deception could have serious consequences."
— Anastasia, mother of 7-year-old Sasha
Psychologists and teachers strictly separate the concepts of “children’s lies” and “children’s fantasy.” It is believed that up to the age of eight, stories invented by a child are the source of his full mental development. But by the age of 8, a child already understands well that lying is bad.
Let's learn to be honest and truthful
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There are quite a few classifications of lies - according to the methods of achieving what you want, according to the specific goals of deception, according to the damage caused to the environment. But any lie can be conditionally classified as passive or active. [2]
Passive lie
If a child refuses to talk about something that he knows well, this is a passive lie. In this way he protects himself or, for example, his best friend. It may seem to the child that he is not lying at all, since he is not inventing any stories.
Hiding the truth can be complete or partial. In both cases, this is also a lie.
Active lie
When the truth is distorted beyond recognition, and the story is presented to the interlocutor as the truth, this is an active lie. A child can invent the most incredible stories and skillfully juggle facts if this allows him to achieve a specific goal.
There may be 2 options here. The child “forgets” to tell certain parts of a particular story, because this will relieve the parents of accusations. And in order to present himself in a positive light in front of his friends, he quickly supplements the real event with fictitious facts.
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Tip #8: To prevent your child from lying, set punishments commensurate with the offense
To prevent your child from lying, set punishments commensurate with the offense.
Some mothers and fathers, trying to raise a well-mannered person, go too far with punishments. Advice:
- Before scolding a child and depriving him of something, it is worth assessing the scale of the disaster.
If they are minor, then the correction should not be exhausting. Of course, if instead of lying, the child already tries a sincere confession, it is worth taking this into account and reducing the punishment. All parents punish their children, but wise father and mother set punishments in proportion to the offense.
Refusal of iron fists
Is a 10 year old child lying? What to do? Parents often think about how to “correctly” intimidate and scold a child so that he immediately begins to tell the truth. Unfortunately, such a result cannot be achieved: the more punishment and scolding a child hears and endures, the more sophisticated he will begin to invent.
If children begin to tell lies for no apparent reason, it is worth considering whether the parents are raising the child correctly. Aren't there a lot of controls and restrictions placed on the younger generation?
In order to prevent children's lies, it is worth refusing to play it safe. At first they may turn out to be a small lie, but by puberty they will lead to serious protests on the part of the child.
Support always
Does a 10-year-old child constantly lie? It is difficult to answer what to do, because the algorithm of actions depends on the reason for the appearance of children's lies. However, some tips can still be applied almost always. If they don’t stop telling lies, they will at least show that parents are attentive to their offspring.
Once the liar is caught, you need to show him that parents are not guards. They will always listen and support. True, if there is no mutual trust in mother and father at all, it will take a long time to move towards the goal.
conclusions
Preschool age is a period when a child’s imagination actively develops. The child can transfer his inventions to real life, fantasizing about himself, loved ones and events that impressed him. In these cases, the child's lie is innocent. However, sometimes the baby lies deliberately. There are many reasons for this, but one thing unites them - a lack of love and acceptance. If you are faced with the fact that a child is lying, think about whether he receives enough attention, whether he feels deprived, whether his interests are taken into account, and whether he is often punished. Try to create an atmosphere of psychological safety in the family in which the child could share his feelings and experiences without fear of rejection. Then he will not have the desire to lie.
We know, but we are silent
Still wondering how to stop a 10-year-old child from lying? Experts recommend not letting children know you know the truth. This will only escalate the situation.
In addition, try not to set yourself the task of exposing your children to clean water. This is a deliberately destructive technique. It cannot in any way be connected with the child’s trust and freedom.
If you know that children have lied, you need to remain silent. Instead, you need to think about how to ensure that children learn to trust their parents. Support and understanding are an excellent prevention of children's lies.
Uncomfortable topics of conversation
Personal, “uncomfortable” topics
There are situations when teenagers do not always lie, but only in the case of unpleasant conversational moments. This mainly concerns friendship, love and sex education. Minors, trying to hide some points or having no desire to discuss such topics at all, begin to lie. This happens due to poor contact with the child. He cannot fully open up and tell everything as it is. Advice from a psychologist will help establish this contact, but it is worth knowing that the problem here may not only be with the teenager, the parent must also change.
Fear of failure
If teenagers in the first case lie only to their parents, then their fear of failure causes a defensive reaction, which manifests itself in lying to everyone. Teachers are the first to be negatively affected. A schoolchild, fearing publicity or ridicule, deliberately lies that he did not learn the lesson. He tells parents lies in the form of exaggerations of his success at school. In this case, you will need consultation or advice from a psychologist. If teenagers outgrow certain categories of lies without the intervention of specialists, then this one can leave trauma for the rest of their lives. Already in adulthood, a person will not only lie to everyone, but will also not be able to express himself as an individual due to constant fear.
The child is lying. And parents?..
Many adults demand crystal honesty from children, but they themselves cannot boast of such impeccable behavior. After all, you must admit that in our “adult” lives, lying is often the only or easiest way out of various situations. Here they understated, there they remained silent, here they embellished their merits, there they downplayed their guilt... Often a growing child becomes a witness to such tricks, and naturally takes an example from their parents.
It is impossible to control the behavior of a son or daughter constantly, because in addition to home, the child has a kindergarten or school, a group of friends, clubs or sections. Parents can set an example of honest communication with their child, only then can they count on mutual frankness. Children may continue to tell lies outside the family, but they will be able to communicate honestly and fearlessly with their parents about their concerns. And this is already a lot.
For their part, adults must provide unconditional acceptance and understanding to their child, even if he reports some shocking news about his life or shares really serious problems. This is your child, and you are always on his side, no matter what happens. Of course, this applies to children of adolescence and older, but the basis of basic trust and honesty within the family must be created from the birth of the baby.
Translation into game
The following advice should help those whose children begin to invent stories due to their rich imagination. There is no need to chop it. A child’s imagination can help him get settled in life in the future; it must be preserved for as long as possible.
Therefore, if parents notice how their inventive child begins to invent, they need to direct their imagination in a peaceful direction. For example, turn everything into a game or offer to write a “home book.” This approach usually has a therapeutic effect.
We talk about consequences
If at the age of 10 a child lies to his parents, there is no need to immediately ring the bells, accuse the child of all sins and intimidate him. All this, as practice shows, turns out to be useless. Children must understand why certain actions cannot be done.
That is why, when parents catch their children lying, they should calmly talk about it. It is worth giving examples when a lie led to dire consequences, but this will have to be done wisely, without making things up. Cartoons and movies about the dangers of lying also help a lot.
Let's summarize...
It is naive to demand from a person impeccable crystal honesty in communicating with everyone and in all life situations. Even if this person is your own child, about whom you think you know absolutely everything. A newly born person is already a personality, the formation of which we, adults, can only indirectly influence. Some children are prone to honesty, others to fantasies, others to looking for easy ways, the easiest of which is lying...
If parents manage to get their child to be honest towards them at least, this is a great help for all their interactions, both at a young age, and in adolescence, and in the adult life of their son or daughter.
Even if you are strenuously fighting children’s lies, but the child continues to deceive, do not despair: education is a long process, with its own breakthroughs and setbacks. Praise your child for his honesty, tell him that you are proud of his truthfulness. And children's lies will gradually fade away.
Desire to have secrets and personal boundaries
A 10-year-old child is lying - what to do? Parents need to remember themselves at this age. Most likely, everyone had some secrets of their own. And I wanted to keep them secret from my parents or relatives. Such a desire can lead to lies.
Under such circumstances, there is no need to punish, or “lecture” about the dangers of lying. How to behave? It was as if nothing had happened. Let the child have his own harmless secrets. Everyone has the right to them. And even a mother and father cannot violate the personal boundaries of even small, but still individual people.
Over time this will pass. The child will outgrow and learn not to lie, but to keep secrets secret so that he does not have to discuss them with other people at all. Respect for the right to personal space has a beneficial effect on education in general. For example, you can reduce the likelihood of violent protest during puberty to a minimum.
