Are you sick of your child lying? Well, this is how to make it stop. I'm Nicholeen Peck. I'm a
parenting expert. I'm also a recovered liar. Yep. I had a habit to lying. So,
I know what I'm talking about on this. I've worked with troubled teens and families for
years lying's a common problem that people have. And in this video, we're going to tackle it.
Every video on this channel is seen through the lens of self-government or being able to control
yourself. Lying is a hard habit to control. It is a hard thing to break especially once you get
into it a little ways. And almost everyone has a moment in time where they experiment with lying.
And then they usually break the habit. But there are some people that get trapped in the habit
and they can't get out. There are multiple reasons why lying happens. And we could spend
time talking about those. But in this video, we want to help you conquer the lying at your house.
So, I am going to share a story with you along the way about a family who's been working with their
child on conquering lying. And I'm going to share with you 5 things that you can do to
stop the lying at your house. First, be patient. This is a hard habit to break. When a person
truly gets in the habit of lying, they know that they have a problem.
And they are trying to stop it. I know because for years, I tried to teach myself to stop lying.
And until I made a skill to help me with the problem, I couldn't break the habit. Recently,
on a teaching self-government support group call, I was talking with a parent about her child and
lying. The parent was asking how to conquer the problem with lying at her house and discussing
how some of the things that I had been telling her were working really well. Well, she said,
"You know what I found is that my daughter knows when she's lying. She doesn't want to lie. But for
some reason, she just keeps doing it. She does feel bad about it after. And I've noticed that
as we're working on conquering this problem that I just need to be patient with her and I need to
recognize that it's going to take time for her to fully master this." And I said, "Oh, yes.
Patience. Please have patience." Because even when I resolved not to lie anymore and made myself a
skill set for how to control the impulse to lie, I still wasn't perfect. I had been lying for years.
And by the way I made the skillset for myself when I was 14 years old. There's other videos on this
channel that talk about that experience that I had when I was 14 and why I made the shift. But today,
I'd like to talk about what I did do to make that shift for myself. One of the biggest things was I
had to be patient with myself. I had to know I was going in the right direction and that I
truly could conquer this problem. Because it was something I would do. Sometimes even before I
knew I was doing it. And when you truly have a habit to lying, that's what happens. But I'll
tell you what. It's possible to liberate yourself from that and find the freedom on the other side.
And it's possible for you to help your child have that change of heart too. But alas that
is what is required a change of heart. They have to want it. So, if you're going to help a child
choose not to lie, you've got to make sure you touch that place in their heart
that gives them hope to conquer it instead of just fear and intimidation. Because that doesn't do as
well as the hope will because they know they have a problem. Next, after you've decided that you're
going to be patient with yourself and that this can be conquered, then you have to recognize the
moment when you are going to lie and you have to be able to stop yourself. So, you have to stop
yourself and analyze. Ask yourself questions like "Is this the truth? What exactly is the truth?
What are the exact words that I need to say to make sure that I'm telling the truth?" It's the
stop part that's hard. So, when I was 14 years old, I told myself that if I could stop myself
before I ever opened my mouth, and that was the best chance I had
of stopping myself from lying. So, basically, I'd make myself mentally pause and assess what
I was going to say before I ever even spoke. So, feel the craving to talk, tell yourself stop,
ask yourself, "is this the truth? What exactly is the truth?" And write down the truth so that
you follow through. After you've analyzed what the truth really is then you have to plan the words.
So, plan out. Okay. What does an honest person say in this situation? What are my words exactly?
There were some times I had to even say them over and over in my mind or write them out and look at
them. When a person is used to lying, they have to tell themselves not to do it about 16 times
before they actually choose not to do it in that situation. You have to be like, "Nope. Only tell
the truth. Don't say that. Say this instead." They have to keep pointing themselves baby step
by baby step in that direction. I hope this helps you as you're trying to help your child
stop lying. Just you saying to them, "Don't lie. You're a liar" or something like that,
it doesn't really help because it doesn't give them something that they can do. And it's not
acknowledging what their brain and body has to go through in order to conquer and stop that
habit. They need to plan out every single word. You might even instruct them to stop talking to
you for a minute. So, you might say, "I'm going to ask you a question but I don't want you to answer
immediately. I want you to stop and I want you to think about the exact words that are the truth.
And then I want you to tell me what those exact words are. Because I already know the truth." So,
give them full opportunity to just tell you the truth. And say, "And when you tell the truth,
we're just going to talk about it. There's not going to be any frustration. There's not going to
be any anger, anything like that. We're just going to talk about it. And I already know the truth.
So, my question is..." Blah, blah, blah. Whatever you ask that they might lie to you about.
So, then you say, "Now, stop and think about exactly what the truth is. There's something
you want to say but that might not be the truth. What is exactly the truth?" Maybe even give them a
piece of paper to write it down. Then say, "Okay. Now, tell me what the truth is." Now a liar that
is truly like pathological, they just love it. They're just so afraid of ever finding out that
they did anything wrong, they're perfectionist, they may even take that time to lie to you again.
And if that's the case, then you have to say "That statement that you made is not true." Right? And
you're going to have to have a plan for how you're going to conquer that. We'll talk about that in
a minute. But you need to prepare with them ahead of time for how you will handle it when they don't
tell the truth. But give them every opportunity. Don't lose hope that they can actually accomplish
it. And cue them, prompt them to take that minute to plan out what the truth really is. So,
planning ahead. That's huge. There are so many different kinds of lies out there. And
I know that you're dealing with different lies at your house. I would love to hear in the comments
what kind of lies are you hearing at your house. Do you feel like they're unique? Maybe even kind
of funny sometimes. Put them in the comments below and let me see what type of lying situation that
you're actually dealing with? I would love to hear from you. After you help your child plan
exactly what they will say and analyze what it is that's going on and what they need to be saying,
then they can report that they did it. Now, this is important because the human brain learns to
problem solve by factoring in cause and effect. So, if they report to you, "Mom, I told the exact
truth." Right after they tell you what the truth is, then you can praise them for the truth. This
teaches them that their good equaled something good. It was praise, it was positive. So,
they should be reporting back to you on a regular basis. Not just in that moment but in your weekly
meetings that you have too. Part of the teaching Self-Government Parenting program that I teach in
my teaching self-government parenting course which is on the teaching self-government.com website,
I talk about different meetings that we have with the children. One of those weekly meetings that we
have is a one-on-one meeting that I call a parent mentor meeting. And in these mentoring meetings,
that would be a great time to also report on how the child has been doing with their plan for
honesty throughout the week. Reporting is huge. When we hold ourselves accountable, it keeps us
motivated to keep moving in a forward positive direction. Now, to really conquer lying, you've
got to help them get emotionally and logically invested in why this problem has to stop. That
doesn't mean shaming, that doesn't mean using guilt trips or anything mean. Because remember,
we're being patient. What that does mean is getting them involved in making a plan
for conquering it. So, with my children, who many of them did have lying problems because
they were troubled youth when I was doing treatment care for foster children ages 12 to 18,
many of them had lying issues. I requested lying issues on purpose so that I could help them solve
the problem because I knew how. Because I'd been a liar myself. So, what you do is you have a parent
counseling session with them. That means you and them you get together you talk about one
issue. The one issue is the honesty issue. That's what we call it --Honesty Issue. We
don't keep pointing liar, liar, liar, stuff like that. We just say "Let's talk about our honesty
issues and how we're improving on our honesty or what we want to be doing to improve our honesty".
We describe the situation that we notice and then we say or I say to my child, "What type
of positive consequence or negative consequence do you think would help motivate you to conquer the
lying problem and to improve in your honesty?" And then I let them think about it. "What would
help me?" And they'll say something like, "Well, if I had to do 30 minutes of work every time I
told a lie, I wouldn't do it anymore." That's what my son decided one time and it actually ended up
becoming a family rule for the Peck family. If anyone lies or does anything dishonest,
we do 30 minutes of work. Well, after 2 times of earning 30 minutes of work,
he chose to conquer that lying habit and didn't do it anymore. Now, this was when he was about eight
years old which is a common time to experiment with dishonesty and lying. But as he got older,
he then started telling a couple of lies again to get out of stuff and we just reverted right
back to that same rule. And we did a correction. He earned his 30 minutes and he went, "Yeah,
that's true. I'm not going to lie. Why did I do that?" Because sometimes they experiment with
lying a little later too when they get into their teen years and they want to get mom or dad off
their back or something like that. Anyway. So, making a plan with them, get them invested and
then follow through. All of this talk about lying is actually talking about controlling yourself or
self-government. If this has been interesting to you, you're probably going to want to learn more
about what self-government is and how you can have self-government for yourself and for your
children and for your family. Self-government is changing the world. So, what is self-government?
I've got a video about that. In fact, I recommend watching the video What Is Self-Government next
so that you can get help improving yourself and your family and your relationships and the world.