Hi! I'm Nicholeen Peck and I'm actually a recovered liar. So, that's fun. We're
going to talk about that story and we're going to talk about why kids
lie and how to stop it.
When I was little I started lying. I don't exactly remember
what I started lying about at first. That first
lie, impossible to remember. Especially when you've told
as many lies as I told when I was young. I started when I was about six years old
and it was probably some lie that got me attention in some way. I was
grandiosing perhaps trying to sing cool or like I
was a know-it-all of some sort. Which is a really common
reason why people choose to lie --to seek attention. Another reason that
people choose to lie is to solve their problems. So, problem
solving is something that is hard to do. And people don't necessarily possess the
skills for how to solve all of their problems.
And so, their problem-solving go-to becomes "I'm just going to deflect this
and tell something that isn't quite true." Or "I
am going to act like it wasn't really my fault that i didn't really do it." They
just deny it. And I did all of the above lying. I got
so good at lying. And we need to be careful about that term
good liar because there is really no such thing as a
good liar. The word good actually comes from the latin root God.
It actually means God like. So, I definitely can't put those 2 together
in my mind. But I became such an accomplished or
seasoned liar (maybe we should say) that I was even lying to myself. I was
fooling myself all the time. In fact, we would have these little
spiritual lessons as a family every week and I kept telling stories about lying
and honesty and how honesty was so important.
And I always did this when it was my turn
to tell the little spiritual lesson. Because I reasoned in my mind "Maybe
if i tell this lesson again, I'll remember.
I'll not turn into the lie monster like the little boy in the story did."
Yeah, it didn't work. So, finally, one day when i was 14 years old, that's
right. 8 years of lying. One day when i was
14 years old, a friend of mine confronted me about my
lying. She said, "You know, Nicholeen, we all know
you're a liar and we don't believe anything
you say. You should choose to tell the truth."
Whoa! That hit me like a ton of bricks. None of my friends believed me when I
was 14 years old? They knew I was a liar?
What was I going to do? I thought and thought about how to solve this problem.
I sat in my room for hours pondering, "What can
I do not to lie anymore?" And I decided the best thing i could do would be to
never talk again. As if that's going to happen. I'm an
extroverted person. I like talking. It's probably one of my best ways of
communicating with others. So, I reasoned to myself that I did know
that what I was doing when I was talking started with a craving to talk. So, before
I lied, I had decided to talk. Before I talked, I
had to get the idea i want to say something.
So, I told myself, "If I can feel that craving to want to talk, to want to seek
attention or say something then I could tell
myself stop." I could take a step back and I could ask
myself, "Is this the truth?" And if it was the
truth, then I could take a step forward and say it with confidence.
But if it was not the truth, then I needed to turn
and walk away and leave the situation. Well, that's what i decided to do. And I
kept track of my progress in a little journal that
was very secret, that nobody knew about. Because even
though I was trying to conquer being a liar,
for some reason I didn't want my parents to know that I was a liar yet.
I wanted to conquer it all on my own that actually just made it harder.
So, what I'd like to talk about in this video is get into a little bit more
about why people lie and then what can we do to
stop the lying. Here's the deal: Hopefully
you've learned from my story, you can't stop there lying. Only they can
stop their lying. But there are key things that you can do as a parent
to create an environment where you can help them be motivated to
stop lying. There are many different time periods in a person's life where you
might find them lying. But the most common time that I've noticed
is when children are between the ages of about
7 and 9. For some reason during this time period, children experiment
with lying. This doesn't mean they're going to be a
chronic liar. If you catch it all the time,
then they won't be. So, don't just say they're telling stories
or make it sound like something it's not. They need to know what a lie is
and they need to know how it needs to be fixed. And we'll talk about that in just
a minute. But they are the most likely to lie.
Then if it's not solved, then a child like me
becomes the next product. The person who habitually lies
tell they can't even stop and it just becomes chronic.
Well, that's how I was. Now, some other people,
they don't lie, they want to be honest. But when push comes to shove, when
a situation gets intense enough or stressful enough
that they don't know how to handle it, they don't have the skills they need,
then they say something that's not true. And even adults will do this. Another
reason that I've seen other people lie is to try to get an
advantage, because they're competitive. Competitive to the point that they have
to win or they have to be right even if it
means telling a lie. That doesn't make any
sense to me. Because if you really want to be
right or you want to win, you'd think you want to know you really did it.
But when you lie, you didn't really do it. So, that's another reason that people end
up lying. And in fact, that one's quite common
especially among adults. So, how do we help our children stop
their lying? Well, we need to teach them skills. I
taught myself a skill when I was 14 years old for how to stop lying.
I taught myself to recognize I wanted to talk, to stop myself
and then to ask myself a question and then to
only tell the truth or walk away. Those were my only 2 options.
And then to report to myself in my journal.
That's a skill set that you can use. You can also
teach children a skill that I taught all of my foster children
and all of my children. In fact, it's a life skill everybody should know.
This skill is called accepting a no answer. So,
when you should not tell a lie, what that means is there's a boundary line you
should not cross. You know telling a lie is wrong so it's
a no. So, how do you accept a no answer? You look at the person or the situation,
you keep a calm face, voice and body then you say
okay or you disagree appropriately. And then you drop the subject.
So, If i get this thought like I want to tell a lie,
then i look at the situation and I think, "I want to tell a lie.
No, I can't do that." So, then because the answer is a no ,that
there's a line I shouldn't cross there. Then I say,
"Okay. I won't cross that line." I keep calm about it. Then I don't think about it
anymore. In fact that's one of the key things you can do. If you're struggling
with lying or if you have a child that's struggling with lying,
they've got to learn how to drop the subject.
Super important. The more and more you think about the lie in your head,
the more likely it is that you're going to say the lie even if you don't want to.
So, learning how to drop the subject and let it go
is key. When I did foster care for troubled teens,
I actually on purpose looked at the files of the children
and tried to find files that said, "Honesty issues." If it said honesty issues
on it, i knew i could help them. Because I had conquered it within myself.
So, how did I help them? When I first
recognized the honesty problem, I took them aside in what I call a
parent counseling session. In this parent counseling session, I
told them what I had noticed and some situations where I'd seen it occur
and then I said to them, "We need to conquer this problem.
Because I know that you can conquer this problem.
What type of negative consequence do you think would be motivating for you
to stop or control the impulse to lie?" And they would think about it. And then
they would come up with a negative consequence that would matter to them.
Oftentimes, we would also come up with a positive consequence
that would make it so that they could be motivated to make a change. If they
had something they were working toward, that was wonderful as well. One time, one
of my children was pulled aside because he was 8
years old. And he was struggling with lying. And I asked him what he thought
would help him control the impulse to lie. And he said, "Mom,
if i had to earn 30 minutes of work every time I told the lie,
then i would not lie anymore." And I said, "Okay,
I can help you with that. We will have that be the rule."
So, he earned 30 minutes of work a couple of times.
And after that, the honesty issues just disappeared.
That's not to say he never told a lie or did anything dishonest again. He
occasionally did. And then he got to do 30 minutes of work
as a reminder that this was something we had decided in his youth.
But for the most part, that did not turn into a habit.
And well it didn't turn into a habit. For the most part he was cured from that
inclination to tell some lies. And he took ownership of that himself.
He self-governed himself. So, that's a key thing. If you want your
children to stop lying, you can't do it for them. You can only
help them be inspired to want to tell the truth. One
thing that you should do is make sure to remind them
what other people know about the statements they say.
I never knew that my friends all knew I was a liar.
I am so grateful to my friend that she took the time to tell me,
"We all know you're a liar and we don't believe a thing you say."
Now, when you're going to tell your child, you should probably say, "Just so you know,
just because somebody doesn't respond or call you out on a lie,
doesn't mean they don't know you're lying." A lot of people just go,
"Oh, that was a lie." And they keep that in their head.
And then they just don't trust what you say a lot of the time or they think less
of you. That's just the way it goes when a
person can't trust another person. So, remember that honest communication is
going to help you have better friendship. Maybe let them watch this video so they
can hear my story. I really did not have any friends and I
didn't even know it. So, be honest with them, let them know how
other people process it. Catch it every single time. Make plans
with them. Help them decide their own positive and
negative consequences. And then follow through. Follow through
the consistency is so important. Lying actually can be
conquered. Hopefully that's liberating for you to know.
If you like this video, I think you're gonna love the next video which is
linked in this corner up here called "How Effective Parents Discipline Their
Children?" This video is going to give you even
more understanding on how to change the hearts of your
children and help them come to calmness, peace, good self-government all at the
same time.