Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to episode 127 of Outnumbered the Podcast. So you got one of your kids lying, huh? Now what do you do? Well, in this episode, we've got your back because we're going to talk about the different types of lying, the motivations behind kids telling lies, solutions, and methods for getting those lies stopped before it becomes a problem. We hope this episode helps you to resolve those little lies with your kids.
Speaker: Hello and welcome to Outnumbered the Podcast. I'm Audrey. And I'm Bonnie. We are experienced moms to a combined total of 19 children. In our weekly episodes, we explore relatable topics using our perspectives of humor and chaos. Tune in for advice and encouragement to gain more joy in your parenting journey.
Speaker: Hey everybody, we're back with another one in our newest series about these little issues, character flaws that come up in our kids that we can help them work through. And today we're focusing on those little liars.
Speaker: Every time we've been talking about this episode, it makes me giggle a little bit. Those little liars. Because we all have little liars at some point or another. And I will also say that maybe we shouldn't have used the word character flaw because it's important to realize that this isn't gonna, none of these naughty things that our kids go through.
Speaker: are going to necessarily plague them for the rest of their life. They're just like little personality quirks that we have to help them work through. But if we don't nip it in the bud, then it can get more problematic later on. So totally normal to have a little liar around. And here are some great tips to help you guys work through it.
Speaker: So I just wanted to share a quick little experience before we get started about a cute little dishonest kid of mine. And first off, let me start by saying that my mom was the best at reading people. I thought it was like magic when I was a kid. If you tried to tell her a little fib, she knew instantaneously that it was not the truth.
Speaker: And I was flabbergasted, like, how does she always know? And I was not a big liar. I was generally a pretty honest kid. But if there was ever any time that I tried to twist the truth a little bit, she could tell. And I had never quite figured out how until I became a mom myself. And one of my older kids had a time when he was hiding something that he wasn't supposed to hide.
Speaker: And I had asked him about it, and I don't think I'd ever fully looked him in the face because he had kind of brushed me off. No, I don't have it, whatever. And then finally, it got serious enough that I had to sit down with each kid and look them in the face and say, can you please tell me if you know where this thing is? Have you been hiding it? Have you been abusing it, whatever? I think it was an electronic device. And he, you know, eye to eye just started doing the shifty eye thing. So I was looking from corner to corner and said, no, I told you. I swear every word was like shift, shift, shift.
Speaker: I wish I could show you one video." And he said, no, I told you, I don't have it. And I'm like, oh, that's how she knew. And every kid has a tell, I think. Some are very good at it, but if you know your children, you will know generally, I think, when they're being dishonest. And this one was just a funny little, I had to struggle to not laugh because I thought, okay, son, all right, I actually know that you're not telling the truth, so why don't you just fess up and we'll go through it.
Speaker: That was a cute little lesson for both of us. I think I've heard myself saying to some of my kids, you know, like number seven, eight, I've said, do you think this is the first time a kid has ever said or done this to me? Like, buddy, you know, there are like seven older kids who have tried that one on me before. So, nah, good luck. You think the first one to lie to me? You are not.
Speaker: So we want to start with a caveat. Again, that if your intuition is telling you your child's lying is abnormal over the top, above and beyond, please pay attention to that. There is a, we're going to talk about the types of lying in a second here, but we're not health professionals. We're just moms who have dealt with an awful lot of kids who lie and just, you know, trying to slip low on past year or something.
Speaker: If it goes above and beyond, if your intuition has got that red light flashing, listen to that and maybe seek out help. Right. Or if you can't always tell when he's like, now this is normal to occasionally be hoodwinked by a child, but if you have a child who seems really proficient in it, that might be a chance to involve a healthcare professional and say, we need to really work on this. Maybe there's some underlying issues like you're saying.
Speaker: Yeah, there'll usually be other behaviors, negative behaviors that are involved also. It won't just be the lying. Right. Totally. Yep. So this episode will cover the different types of lying, the motivations our kids have for being dishonest, and then some solutions and methods for stopping it before it gets out of hand. All righty. Let's talk about the three types of lying. So these are actually categorized by psychologists. They call them normal lying.
Speaker: If your kid lies, it's normal. Compulsive liars and then pathological liars. So in this episode, we're going to focus on normal and compulsive lying because that's kind of what we have experience with. And neither Bonnie and I feel like we have experience with a pathological liar.
Speaker: But that is, like I was mentioning before, that is kind of taking it to another level where there's a psychological thing going on in the brain, and usually there's quite a few other negative behavior things going on too. So we do have an article linked in the show notes about the three different types of lying. And if you kind of are questioning yourself about what kind of little liar you've got on hand, you might want to go read that article.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, some great tips in there. Okay, so we're going to talk about the normal and the compulsive lying. And these two types peak between the ages of three to eight, so still while they're pretty young. And it is very good to address it early before it becomes a habit, obviously, right? Or you can also use some of these tips that we're sharing if you have a child who is already in the habit of lying.
Speaker: And like I mentioned before, it's really important to get this one early, especially before they become pre -teens and teens for a couple of reasons. Number one, they start dealing with more important things in life. Like you really don't want your teenager to be a compulsive liar when he starts driving and leaving home and having more independence, right? That would be bad. And also as they get older, they become a little bit more socially savvy and they become better liars.
Speaker: And then it becomes a little bit more difficult to catch them and get them to come clean. And so if we can fix it when they're young, it becomes a much better issue or much less of an issue. I don't know if it's ever a good issue. No.
Speaker: All right, so let's talk about normal lying first now Maybe it would help to tell you like what the kid that this this is the little kids The littlest kids and the first little lies that come out and they call this normal lying And what it's related to is like something they call theory of mind so where a kid starts to actually think a little bit in the abstract and they can they can like imagine things so they're starting to have an imagination and they can
Speaker: This is like it's called theory of mind and they just start crossing the line between what's real and what's not real. They're also developing a sense of morality. So what is right and what is wrong? And that also is when they kind of experiment a little bit with the lying. Like, is this right? Is this wrong? If I say a little lie, does that make it true? Like just kind of the experimentation.
Speaker: Another motivation for these first little normal lies are fear of consequences. They don't want to get in trouble. And then they're developing problem solving techniques. So I accidentally broke mom's vase. If I clean up and throw away the evidence and say it didn't happen, that's one solution. It's not broken because I said it didn't happen. So those are some of the motivations for what they categorize under normal lying.
Speaker: Right. And none of these should be a surprise to us because we even as grownups are tempted to use these same things, right? And maybe we don't blatantly lie, but we might shift the truth a little bit here and there to make life seem a little bit easier on us. We try not to, obviously, but these little kids are just experimenting with those skills. Not skills we want them to have, but that's why they're there. And this type of lying is usually seen in the very young. So like we said, that three to eight age, more than three, four, five -year -olds.
Speaker: And it's it's even cute sometimes so picture for example the three -year -old that gets into the chocolate He's not supposed to get into and you say did you eat chocolate? And he looks up at you with innocent eyes and there's chocolate everywhere on his face and goes no mommy. I Didn't eat the chocolate and it's you know You can giggle about it because it's very obvious that he got into something he didn't wasn't supposed to it's plain as the nose on his face and yet he chose chooses to lie about it because he knows that there might be a consequence or he's like you said playing with this and
Speaker: this idea of truth versus non -truth. Let me play around with this and see what happens. Yes. We're going to offer you some solutions now to help out with this little normal lying that they're starting to experiment.
Speaker: So one tip is to focus on the underlying behavior, not the lie. So let's say they've got the, you go back to example of the chocolate all over the face. You focus on saying, you know what, it's wrong to take chocolate without asking and, you know, develop, go into that and not
Speaker: even go into the territory of, you know what, you lied. And I'm going to have to give you consequences when you tell mommy that you didn't eat chocolate and it's all over your face, then that's called a lie. And no, just skip over all that and go to the underlying behavior. Eating chocolate when you're not supposed to be eating chocolate is not allowed in this house because it's mine and you can't have it. Exactly. Maybe if there's horseshoes, you can have that. That's garbage chocolate.
Speaker: Yeah, and it almost becomes a little bit too complicated for those younger years, right? You just got to focus on one problem at a time. Yeah. Another solution for this normal line is to model and emphasize the truth in your own interactions with your kids. So what this might look like is let's say I do something wrong or that ended in a bad situation, right? Like I broke something of my child's or I spilled something or whatever.
Speaker: It's awesome to be able to model that truth telling, right? Like, oh my gosh, you guys, I just broke a cup. Shoot, that was an accident. Do you see how I'm telling you the truth? It would have been easy to hide. You know, just kind of walk them through that. Or, oh, I broke this thing of dad's. I better tell him so that he doesn't wonder what happened to it. And maybe I'll offer to replace it, right? Just this very neutral conversation about sometimes we're tempted to hide the truth, but it's so much easier to just stay truthful.
Speaker: Yeah, another good way to model that. One way that I have modeled that for my kids is, I'm sure you've all done this before, and you push your grocery cart out to the cart and you've loaded all the groceries and you turn around to push it back into the cart corral and there's something on the bottom that you forgot to pay for.
Speaker: And all the kids are loaded in the car and you've already paid for your groceries. And it's a very strong message to them about how much you value and hold up and emphasize truth when you load them all back into the car and you say, guys, we forgot to pay for this. And that's not honest. And you go back in and you pay for it.
Speaker: So just make it, just make, just uphold truth in your life and honesty. Oh yes. I have had that situation happen to me at least three times when my kids were little and I'm thinking, when will I learn to check the bottom of the cart because, yeah, because I mean, does the $5 case of water really matter to the grocery store? Probably not. But my kids integrity, yeah, it really does. And this is a really fairly simple and easy way of explaining that and showing them through your own actions. So I love that example.
Speaker: Yeah. All right. Moving on to the next one. Another solution for this normal lying is if it continues, you know, like the little chocolate on the face example that we used and they might kind of not lie after that. Like, Oh, that didn't work. Like I tried that and that didn't work.
Speaker: So that might solve it. But if there's a little bit of, you know, continued lying, then you just give them the definition. What is lying? What does it mean to be dishonest? What is the truth? And this will be for a kid that's a little bit older and has been lying a little bit more. And you say, you know what, what you've been doing to me is called lying. And that is not acceptable. And what we do in this house is we do truth and, you know, we tell the truth and this is what we do in
Speaker: Remember that time when we had all the groceries and so you define it for them and lay it out. And this is our family's creed and this is not our family's creed. And just lay it out. What is lying? What is truth?
Speaker: Yes, agreed, 100%. It's really important to remember that we have to define these things for our kids and not automatically assume that they know what it means. I'm sure you've heard the little story of the child who is taught repeatedly that he can walk down the sidewalk, but he has to stop at the corner. And then one day his mom catches him walking into the street, and she breaks him and gets on him, and you're supposed to stop at the corner. You're supposed to stop at the corner. And he turns to her and says, mom, what's the corner?
Speaker: So sometimes we especially with my younger kids what just happened the other day something similar when my kid just didn't even understand what I was talking about I'd explained it a hundred times to my first five kids, but the second half hadn't gotten the same lesson and so I needed to you know, make sure that they really understand the the definition of those words that we're using.
Speaker: So another solution for normal lying is to just listen. Listen to the problem, let them talk to you about it, work with them to find a solution that involves honesty, especially if it might be something that requires a little bit of character development, right? Like confessing to a sibling that they broke something.
Speaker: Yeah, I know. So often I do the problem solving for my kids because it's just easier and it's just faster and I've already done the work and I can just do the honesty without the big internal debate about lying about it or not. It's like just easy for me to just do the problem solving and move on. But that robs them of all those experiences and all that internal development because of learning to tell the truth and all that.
Speaker: Yeah, just listening, listening and allowing them to come up with their own solutions, even if they're not like the ones that we would choose, like that's going to help them develop the theory of mind and their sense of morality in ways that they need to do for themselves. Right. Yeah.
Speaker: All right, so let's move on to compulsive lying. Now this is, compulsive lying is a little bit more sophisticated. If lying can be called sophisticated. But the motivations for these are like, okay, so maybe they've lied before and it's worked and they've gotten away with it. And so the motivate, there's different motivations here than just kind of exploring and kind of that more innocent type of normal lying.
Speaker: So the motivation behind this is, you know, laziness. Did you clean your room? Yep. Yep. And everything's under the bed, you know, or he's got it swept under the rug.
Speaker: Um, they want to control the situation. So they want really what they're wanting to do is control your or someone else's thoughts or impressions about a situation. So that's where lying comes in with older kids. There's some peer pressure to lie about who you are or what you are so that you are, um,
Speaker: the same as your peers? Yeah, one of the cool kids, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then to establish their identity would be another reason they would be lying and telling lies to kind of deny who they are and try to make themselves into something they're not. It kind of is similar to the peer pressure, but this is kind of coming from an internal pressure that they have. Instead of doing the work to become who they are, just lie about it.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm sure we have all seen this example in our elementary school days or even done it ourselves. Everyone just wants to fit in, right? There's a great example of this if you have a kid who's dealing with this type of lying in a cute little kid's book called Adrian Simcox Does Not Have a Horse. And it's the story of a little kid from the wrong side of the track, so he's very poor.
Speaker: who tells these tall tales about this horse that he owns. And the little girl who's narrating the book tells everyone, no, he doesn't. No, he doesn't. And she's very adamant about it until finally one day she sees where he lives and she's finally understand some of the background behind why he's lying about this horse. And she's able to just kind of let him do his thing. And obviously we want to emphasize that
Speaker: He should still be telling the truth, but to maybe understand a little, it's a little bit more of a compassionate way of looking at someone with a lying problem. You can help your child that way too.
Speaker: Um, so one solution for this type of lying is to avoid setting up a lie. So here's an example of this. I do this all the time and I am working on it and it is one of my husband's biggest complaints about how my parent, he looks at me every time I do it. I'm like, oh shoot, sorry. And it is when you see a mess or something broken or something that went wrong in the household, don't immediately start yelling. Who did this? It's the first thing I do. Who broke this thing? They're going to be in so much trouble.
Speaker: Well, you know, strangely, nobody is raising their hand and hopping to the front of the line. Do I get a tie? No one wants to fess up. They immediately go, uh -uh, uh -uh, nummy, nummy, nummy. And they all hide behind each other, you know? So if I can much more calmly say, oh, shoot, there was a mess made. Let's all clean it up together. Or, uh -oh, what happened here? You know, to stay calm and rational.
Speaker: Really, honestly, in those types of situations, most of the time, we don't even need to know who was to blame. We just need to set about fixing the problem together, right? But in my anger, I feel like I want someone to blame, and so I start yelling. And I think that's going to make me find somebody to blame, but strangely, it doesn't work.
Speaker: There's a cute little poem my kids have memorized. I'll try to stick it up on Instagram this week or something. It's called Mr. Nobody by Anonymous. Did your daughter do this poem on Instagram? OK. Yes, I remember this one. So cute.
Speaker: I don't think I've put it up yet, but I can make sure to get it up there if I don't have it up there yet. But it starts out, Mr. Nobody by Anonymous. I know a funny little man as a mouse who does the mischief that is done in everybody's house. There's nobody ever sees his face and yet we all agree. Every plate we break was cracked by Mr. Nobody. Yes, I've got my guy at my house too. He's a good hider.
Speaker: All right, moving on. So another solution to help a little bit older child with compulsive lying who can understand what they're doing when they lie is to explain how lies put you in bondage and truth sets you free. So here's what I mean by this. Once you tell a lie, you're in bondage to that lie. You have to keep track of that lie so that you don't betray that lie down the road.
Speaker: But if you tell the truth, that sets you free to just always be able to tell the truth about that matter. And when you explain this to a kid who's been lying,
Speaker: like the freedom that they get on their face and the relief and like the light bulbs go on and they're just like, yeah, I kind of am in bondage to these different lies that I've told because I got to keep track of them who I told what to and you know that and it's just like this, this prison they're in, they've got to keep track of all these lies, but just the beautiful freedom of telling the truth, even when it's really, really hard.
Speaker: Yes, I love that. It really is beautiful to be honest, right? In fact, so many of us I'm sure have encountered a silly instance of this in like a movie or a book where someone, you know, tries to be at two dinners at once and they're telling a lie about who they are, right? And it just exacerbates into this like ridiculous scenario where they're like running back and forth, like where one lie escalates into another and a bigger one and a bigger one, this big snowball effect. And really in real life, it's rare that that happens, but it does sometimes.
Speaker: And sometimes it ruins people's lives because they have just started with this small little deceit that then becomes this huge double life. If we think it can't happen to us, then we're probably wrong. That's why we stop with the small ones, right? So I love that, the beauty of truth.
Speaker: Another solution for this compulsive lying is to reward the truthful behavior. So in that circumstance that I mentioned before, like me yelling about blaming someone, instead to just be cleaning things up, you know, going about my way, it's very often that a kid will come to me and confess, often in a quiet moment later on, like, mom, I'm sorry, it was me, especially if they know I'm not going to explode on them.
Speaker: And I try to always make that a really sweet bonding moment where I gather them in my arms and I say, oh my goodness, that was probably really hard to tell me. Thank you so much for being honest. I really appreciate that. And if necessary, you can talk about how to avoid the problem in the future. But generally, that's not necessary. Generally, it's enough of a lesson learned that they are just happy to have that burden off their chest. And then it becomes this really great connecting moment with the child.
Speaker: Yes. I totally do that too. Like every time it's, um, it's really, I don't know. It just feels really, really important to take and reinforce that kind of behavior that you just, you just reward it with your praise and with your touch and with your all that, you know, the five love languages you, if you don't know your kids, just use them all and just, yeah. And just tell them, you know, just how amazing and, and reinforce that.
Speaker: difficult truth that they told you. Yeah. Yeah. Really, really, like you said, reward them for doing this hard thing. The other thing I wanted to mention is if the child has had an issue with lying in the past, that might be a great time to bring up their past motivation.
Speaker: Wow, you did such a good job being honest this time. Do you know why you lied that other time? Or why might you have wanted to lie? Just to kind of discuss, oh, was it because you were afraid? Sometimes we can learn about our own behaviors. Oh, they were afraid to tell me because they didn't want to get punished. Or they were afraid because they didn't want to ruin my day or whatever. Sometimes just a little bit of probing can help us improve as parents to kind of draw out the truth. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty awesome.
Speaker: All right, next solution for compulsive liars is just explain the natural consequence of lying. So when you lie and people discover it,
Speaker: they don't believe anything you say, not just the lies that you tell. There's nothing that you believe that they can say. And you can, instead of, you know, making it personal when you explain this to a kid, like you instead of saying, I can't believe anything you say because you tell me lies about certain things, you just say, you know, this one person I knew one time
Speaker: They told everybody lies and everybody knew that they told lies and nobody believed Anything that person said even when they weren't lying so kind of remove it from the child and then you know Like make that like you don't want to be like that you want to be believed when you're telling the truth so it's better just to tell the truth then to you know Become known as a liar that nobody leaves anything that you say right the boy who cried wolf, right? It's a reason that's a classic tale
Speaker: The other thing we have done in this regard is we've talked about the trust bank account. I think this may be a Stephen Covey concept. It was taught to me as a child and we've just kind of repeated it with my kids. We teach them about a bank account or like a piggy bank.
Speaker: that as you do things that are trustworthy, as you are honest, it's like putting a deposit in that picky bank. And so when you require trust of your parents, right? Like you want to go to your friend's house for later than usual, or you want anything that's a little bit out of the ordinary.
Speaker: your parent looks at that bank account and goes, yeah, I trust this child. Sure, he can have this extra privilege or whatever, stay up a little bit later, et cetera. But if you're constantly making withdrawals on that bank account or that piggy bank, you're constantly pulling the trust out, right? Because you're being dishonest or doing things that are untrustworthy, then when that time comes, guess what? You're in the negative, right? You're overdrawn.
Speaker: And all of a sudden your parent does not trust you and you don't get the privileges that you would have hoped for because you are not really a trustworthy child in that moment. So I have loved that, that visual image. It helped me as a child and I hope it helps my kids because we keep talking about it. Yeah, that is a really, really good piece of imagery to use with them.
Speaker: All right, now we're going to go ahead and talk about the actual methods that we use when we've come across a kid who's lying. And this is a little bit older kid with a compulsive lying and none of the things that you've tried and the solutions are really kind of working. So we're going to talk about actual methods that we use. Yes.
Speaker: So the first one in dealing with compulsive lying is to give a warning and very clear expectations and consequences for the future. So you've caught your kid in the lie and you say, oh shoot, you chose to be dishonest. I'm really sorry that you did that because there has to be
Speaker: you know, consequences for this. This is, I'm gonna let you, this be a warning for you, but the next time there's a lie, and be really careful with your wording here. Make sure it's not, the next time I catch you lying. Because it'll just get really good. And not being caught. Right, right, right, right. The next time that you're dishonest, there's going to be XYZ type of consequences. And you can make it very loving. Like I really don't want to have to do that. That would be really sad. Let's just be honest with each other. I promise to always be honest with you.
Speaker: All right, then step number two is you've got to actually follow up on those consequences. I know, I know. So, you know, have like sit down with your spouse and have it worked out. This is what we do about lying. And because sometimes, I don't know, in the heat of our anger, we make rash consequences that we just can't follow up on or we hate to follow up on. I never do that. What are you talking about? Oh, yeah, me too. I'm just a hypothetical.
Speaker: Oh, but we have to actually have consequences and follow up on them. And I never, never like to advertise my kids little sins to people outside the home. But sometimes the consequences do mean that they don't get to, you know, go to a get together or something where, where you have to say, and you don't have to, you know, lay it all out to the other mom. Oh, my kids a little liar.
Speaker: But you can just say, you know what, we're dealing with some things that we're going to continue working on and our little Johnny's going to stay home instead of come to your gathering. We're really sorry. But whatever the consequences are, you've got to follow through on it. Or you're just reinforcing the lying and telling them, hey, you lied, you get away with it.
Speaker: Carry on. Right, right. Two things I want to say about that. Yeah, again, wording is really important. We joke about calling them little liars, but you really don't want to do that to their face. Because if a child starts identifying as a liar, then guess what? He lies more because that's who he is. It's his identity, right? Yeah. And girls can lie too. We just keep saying him. But yeah, be very careful to say, oh, I know you're a good, honest, sweet boy girl.
Speaker: Let's make sure that we show how honest we are in our words as well, that we don't try to hide things, right? So they don't identify as a liar. And the other thing I was going to say is it is okay to not give consequences right in the moment. So I found this to be a really, really helpful tool for me because I get so overwhelmed by catching them in the lie or the naughty thing they did or whatever that I just shout out the consequences, like you said, and things that I don't really want to follow through with that are a little bit harsh or
Speaker: I just don't want to do. So it's okay to say, wow, I'm kind of disappointed in your, you know, dishonesty. There's going to need to be a consequence. I'm going to have to come back and let you know what that is, but just follow through, right? So then that evening you can sit down, talk to your husband, or you could just take a few minutes to cool down yourself and come up with consequences. You can even come up with them ahead of time. Like if there's lying in our house, it's this.
Speaker: if there's, you know, although you might want to make that a little bit more, you know, punishment fits the crime type of thing. So yeah, that's been a really good tool for me is just to come back to it.
Speaker: The third method we can use for dealing with this compulsive type of lying is to give your child actual opportunities to regain your trust, right? And this can look like so many different things, but if your kid constantly feels like he's just getting in trouble and he doesn't know how to break out of that cycle, then you can kind of get creative with ways of allowing him to be, you know, show that he is trustworthy, right? Little assignments and he goes and does them and you come back and say, wow, you followed through and you
Speaker: and you didn't try to hide anything, you know, just kind of go above and beyond and finding those ways to reestablish that trust so he doesn't always think that he can't ever win it back.
Speaker: Yeah. One thing I like to do with my, um, Oh, it depends on the child, um, as to, as to what age I start doing this, but say 10 ish, um, a 10 ish year old child. Um, something that is just completely unrelated to any other lie that they've been struggling with is I like to give them a little bit of cash and send them into the grocery store by themselves with a list. And like, I trust you, I trust you that you can do the whole process that you can, um,
Speaker: You're grown up, you're responsible. And like, I'm going to sit in the car and nurse the baby. Can you just run in and get these three items? Here's the cash. I trust you. It's like a huge, huge trust thing to do that with your kid. And obviously, you need to know your grocery store in your area and your child. Obviously, we're not advocating sending anybody into an unsafe situation.
Speaker: But then again, that is another level of trust. Like, you know, if we're always the mommy and saying, you know, I just can't send you in there alone. I just, it's not that I don't trust you. It's that I don't trust everybody else. And the kid is like, yeah, you don't trust me. But that's one thing I like to do is I'm around, you know, around that age when I see them just kind of curving into being able to handle that is just, I trust you. We need this. Our family needs a gallon of milk or not in our case, we have cows.
Speaker: Our family needs, you know, toilet paper. There we go. Our family needs toilet paper. We're almost out. And I trust you to take this money and go handle the transaction and come back out. And that's just really, really a trust, establishing trust with them, but confidence building for them as well. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, my kids have been a little bit later and being able to do that much, but one thing we've started even when they're much younger is being the errand boy when I'm in the store, you know? So they don't have to be brave enough to even walk in by themselves, but they can run three aisles over and pick something out and get some of those skills so that when the time does come to do it on their own, they totally know where everything is and they're not scared at all. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, so even like a seven -year -old can do that. It's pretty awesome. Yeah. You know, in a safe grocery store, like you said. Yeah.
Speaker: All right, so some follow -up thoughts. One final thing that I absolutely is key to helping a kid who lies, or maybe has a little bit more compulsion to lie, is encouraging them to develop a relationship with the spiritual, with the spiritual side of themselves and with God. And so in our Bible, it says, God cannot lie.
Speaker: And so we get that idea started on our kids really.
Speaker: really early in their lives that God cannot lie and that truth is valued above all other things. And when you just kind of use that as the foundation that you build everything else on with your kids, then it kind of puts lying in such a negative light that it's just really somewhere they don't want to go. And upholding the Creator God as just this amazing
Speaker: deity that cannot lie and wanting to have a relationship with him is something that we've encouraged in our kids from the very beginning and it really does help them if they're compelled to lie or they have this little lying thing going on to just kind of think about and establish a relationship with the one who cannot lie.
Speaker: Oh yes, I'm so glad you added that. Lying and dishonesty is one of those things that is so much bigger than just us as parents. It's going to be something that they will deal with and have to continue to make the right choices surrounding for the rest of their lives, right? We have temptations to lie until we're dead, basically. And so it's definitely something that's going to be a value that they're going to have to answer to a higher power to. Because if they just have to hide it from mom, then sweet, that's easy, right?
Speaker: And I remember thinking that I remember my early years learning to be honest. It really was my mom because I was afraid of disappointing her or of doing something that would get me in trouble. But very soon thereafter, I developed that deeper sense of, well, I don't want to disappoint God. And these are my beliefs. And whatever your beliefs are, there is a way of tying in that importance of honesty so that it's between them and their own spiritual sense of self, I guess.
Speaker: That's going to be make all the difference and then making the right choice for their own happiness too, right? It's not just about being honest to us. If they leave our home and become pathological liars, they're going to have a very difficult life. So obviously we want them to develop that early and to hold themselves to that high standard.
Speaker: Okay, everybody, we hope something we have said in this episode has been helpful to you. We're going to link in the show notes a couple of things that we've talked about. And we just encourage you to keep on trying. It's totally worth it to have kids that are honest. And if they lie, just be aware that that's normal too.
Speaker: Thanks for listening friends. Click the link in the show notes to subscribe to our email and never miss another episode. Show us some love by leaving a review on iTunes or sharing the podcast with a friend. Thanks for all your support. We'll talk to you next week.
