do your kids ever lie to you? well, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I have 4 children
of my own and I have fostered 12 youth ages 12 to 18. And the majority of them
had problems with (guess what?) lying. And here's news for you: I was a liar myself
in my childhood. And I remember vividly how I conquered it. In this video, we're
going to talk about the skill set, how to control the impulse to lie. I'm going to
tell you a story from my life that hopefully will give you some ideas and
it will gain gained greater insight into why they lie so that hopefully we can
stop it for good.
So, I was a liar. Yeah. In fact, I started lying probably when I was age 6. And I
didn't stop until probably around age 14. Now, there are certain reasons
why I didn't stop. One of those big reasons was no one hardly ever
confronted me about it. People did not say, "Well, Nicholeen, you're lying to me. It
just didn't happen very often." And it didn't happen occasionally but I didn't
feel like it was enough to stop using my skill, right? I knew lying was wrong. My
parents did their job. They taught me that lying was not a good thing, that
people wouldn't trust you, that it was bad for relationships. They even told me
a little story about Danny in the lie monster. And that if you keep lying then
you have to make other lies to cover up those lies. And then soon you turn into
a lie monster. And I was convinced it was true. Yet, I still lied. I didn't want to
lie. There were years where I tried to reform myself yet it was a habit. I would
lie before I even knew I was going to talk. It was like the lie happened in my
head and came out and I thought that it was truth. Was a terrible habit. And try
as I might I wasn't able to break the habit. I think it's because it served me
so well. I was able to cover for myself when I make mistakes. I was able to get
out of chores that I didn't want to do. I was able to impress my friends with cool
stories. All of this lying seemed to have a purpose and it fit really nicely in my
comfort zone of my life not having to take full responsibility for my mistakes
or who I really was. Then one day, it all changed. I was playing ball with some of
my friends. And I'm not going to just say ball randomly. We were playing basketball.
I was a sporty kind of a girl. And after our game of basketball was really going,
we started laughing and talking while we were shooting hoops. And I remember I
said something. I don't know exactly what the lie was but I know it was a lie. It
was one I had recognized. It was some sort of grandiose type lie that would
make me look cool to my friends. I don't remember the lie but I remember the
words and the actions that happened
immediately after the lie. So, what happened was I said the lie and then it
went quiet. All the girls looked at each other and I knew they knew. And that's
awkward. But I just tried to keep going and pretending I didn't know. And maybe
pretending they didn't know. So, I started lying to myself. It was that bad. So, then
the girls started talking to each other and saying, "Hey, how about you come to my
house?" "Oh, yeah I'll go ask my mom." "Yeah. Oh, you
come to my house too." "Okay." So, they all started talking to each other and they
ran away. And there was one girl who was there. It was her house. It was her ball. She
had to put it away. And I remember she had the ball on her hip and she was
turning to put the ball away and then she turned forward and she said, "You know
Nicholeen, we all know you're a liar. And we don't believe a thing you say. You
should choose to tell the truth." She
walked away from me. Just like that. That hit my heart so deep.
I was cut to the quick. I thought I had friends and that moment proved to me at
age 14 that I didn't. That they were just putting up with me. That I was just some
neighborhood kid that their parents that I had to be they had to be nice to. They
didn't like my company. At least whenever I lied, I walked home worried. "What was I
going to do? How was I gonna solve the problem?" I went into my room and I sat
there thinking deep, deep kind of reminds me of like the Pooh Bear. If you've seen
the Winnie the Pooh movie, he's sitting there going "Think, think, think."
That's what I was doing. Think. How do you fix this? I was too proud and still my
lies were too hidden for me to approach my parents. Tell them what I'd done, tell
him my problem asked for help. And so, I tried to solve it myself.
And as I sat there and thought about the problem, I realized
that I had to stop myself from lying. I said, I will not lie ever again. And then
I went "How am I going to do that? Every time I open my mouth, I tell a lie." And that I
thought, "That's it. I just won't talk. I will not talk and
then I will not lie." And then I went, "How am I going to not talk? That's impossible." I
mean I am kind of extroverted after all. And that was going to be very difficult.
But then it came to me, "Wait, what if I could recognize that craving to talk and
I could stop myself before I say anything and make sure for sure that
it's going to be true before I even speak. What if? Then maybe I could stop
myself from lying." So, that's what I resolved to do. That any time I felt this
craving within me to say something to be part of a conversation, to get out of a
problem, any craving to open my mouth that I would tell myself, "Stop." I would
take a small step back and then I would ask myself a question.
So, disengage. Ask self question. "Is this the truth?" And if the answer was yes, then
I would step forward just slightly and I would tell exactly what the truth was.
Being very careful to say the truth exactly. But if after I had taken the
step back, I said to myself, "No, this isn't the truth. This thing I'm craving to say
is not true." Then I would turn and I would walk away. Not allowing myself to
say anything at all because I knew myself well enough that if I stayed
there, I'd say it anyway. And I didn't want to do it. Essentially, what I did was
I developed a skill for myself. A skill that involved stopping and evaluating
the words that I was going to say before they came out of my mouth. It seems like
that should be easy to do. But for me, it was hard.
I made a skill set. What was the skill set? It contains certain steps. Step
number 1: Recognize the craving that I want to say something. Step number 2:
Stop yourself. Step number 3: Analyze. Question "Is this the truth?" Step number
4: Say only the truth. So, it's take action. Or turn and walk away. Then step
number 5 was report. I chose to report in my journal how I did with this lying
problem. I chose to give myself praise for when things did good and to make new
plans and resolve to do better when things were bad. I also am a praying
person. So, I reported to God each day how I did with my desire to be honest. I hope
my story about the skill set I taught myself at age 14 it's helpful for you
while you're trying to teach your children how to overcome their lying
behaviors too. What I'd like to share with you right now is 2 reasons why
children get in the habit of lying that we might not have considered and then
also help you know how to have a good meaningful conversation with them to
conquer the lying problem. So, first why do children lie? About age 6, 7 up until
about age 9 children experiment with lying. So, if you have a seven-year-old or
an 8 year old who has just started lying that doesn't surprise me at all. Because
this is a normal time to experiment with lying. To see if anybody catches it, to
see if it doesn t good, to see what kind of stories they can tell. We should not
call them stories just so you know. There are a lot of parents who say, "Oh,
so-and-so is just telling stories." It's not really stories. If they're trying to
manipulate the situation with it, it is a lie and it actually is a bad behavior
that needs to be addressed. So, that's one reason that children start to
lie. But some of the other reasons might surprise you. The other reasons have to
do with the parents. Many children start lying because it's a defense mechanism.
Because their parents teach them to lie. Because their parents are aggressive or
scary and the children don't want to deal with it. So, they come up with the
defense which is tell a lie. If you have a child that always tells lies when
they're getting into trouble, that's a good thing for you to recognize because
maybe your tone as you're doing your teaching is not calm. Maybe you are
reacting emotionally instead of talking to them logically. Which can help change
their hearts. Especially if you're looking in their eyes and talking to
their hearts at the same time. Another way that parents teach their children to
lie is by setting a bad example of lying themselves. I had a child tell me one
time, "My mom always tells me to tell people she's not home when they call." And
I was like, "Oh." That's good to know. Because you know I've been told that
before, right? Like I didn't tell her that. I was like, "Oh, interesting." So, the
mother doesn't want to talk on the phone for whatever reason. So, she tells the
daughter to tell a lie to somebody else. I've seen parents tell their children
pretend you're not with us and you go and get a different discount and we'll
get this discount. You know, just to try to save some money, they teach their
children to lie. Ah, it makes me so sad that people would put money above
character development, above a person's future integrity. That's amazing to me.
So, those are some reasons people might not factor in for why children lie. So,
let's talk about what to do if your child has chosen to adopted the practice
of lying and you need to put a stop to that right now.
Years ago, my oldest son when he was about 8 years old
adopted the habit of lying. He started doing it. I told him that's
not a good idea. Don't do it. And we corrected it. But he did it again. We
corrected it. He did it again. I knew this is a problem. He's starting to do this
regularly. And I also noticed that he wasn't doing his chores well. That's
another sign of lying. If you say, ""I need you to clean your room" and they stuff it
all under the bed. Especially if they've been taught how to clean a room before,
that's not an honest chore. So, we call that a dishonest chore in our family. So,
he was doing dishonest chores and also telling lies to different people. At that
point, I knew we needed to analyze the situation and have a planning meeting. So,
there are types of meetings that I have with my children called parent
counseling sessions. We had a parent counseling session. I pulled him aside, it
was just me at him and we had a discussion about what I had noticed was
happening with his behavior. And the effects of it. I talked to him about
trust. I talked to him about how people won't take him as seriously if he's not
saying honest statements. And I told him how I used to be a liar. And what
happened to my life and how hard it was to overcome that problem. Then I said, "We
need to make a plan." Well, actually before we made the plan, I said, "Do you
recognize that feeling that happens before you choose to lie?" And he said,
"Yeah." And I said, "What we need to do is we need to recognize that feeling and then
tell ourselves to stop." I taught him the same skill set that I already taught you.
Then I asked him, "What can we do, what type of positive consequence or negative
consequence could we put in place for you, son so that you would be motivated
not to lie anymore." And he thought for a minute. And then he said, "Well, if I had to
do 30 minutes of work every time I told a lie, I would choose not to lie." I said,
"Okay. I can do that for you." We will have it be 30
minutes of work every time. Because he helped me make that decision, he was
personally invested. In fact, he was so invested, he thought he had made a
decision for the entire family. He went to all of his siblings and said, "Just so
you know, we have a rule in our family. If you tell a lie or do anything dishonest,
it's automatically 30 minutes of work." Well, it wasn't a rule for the whole
family. It was just for him. In the end, our family adopted it though because all
of the other children believed it. And said, "Well, I'm not lying." And so, that's
been our rule ever since. If a person doesn't dishonest chore or
tells a lie or steal something, it's automatically a correction with mom or
dad and 30 minutes of work that they have to accept. He only did 30 minutes of
work twice. Before he decided lying just wasn't worth it. So, then we had some
checkup meetings with him regularly for a little while. And we were able to
praise him for how well he was doing it correcting the problem. He did correct
the problem. That doesn't mean it didn't surface again at about age 15 because
that can happen. But he did correct the problem then. And he ended up learning a
lesson for life. Honesty, integrity, a vital lesson of character that we need
to teach our children. Parents are the best educators for their children. In
fact, they're the most natural educators for their children. The relationship
between education and family is a vital one to understand. There is a video that
you should watch next called "What Is The Relationship Between Education And
Family?" This video is going to give you more skills, more understanding on how to
teach your children calmly so that you can have the impact that you want. My
team will put a link right here so you can watch that next.