Words as magic vs bald faced lying

[Psyche]

Caden messed with my contacts this morning and I told him I knew he has but needed to know what he'd put in the cylinder. He bald faced lied several times even after I said he wasn't in trouble. I wasn't accusatory I wasn't yelling.

He lost my contacts.

When he finally told the truth I thanked him.

What is the difference between lying and words as magic? How should I have handled the above.

[J3K]

I think you handled it well.

Who amongst us tells the truth instantly when we know we've been caught doing something we shouldn't have been ? We avoid voice mails , we don't answer phones or we hit 'ignore' online , we ponder over what exactly to say... and eventually we get the courage to say "Yes. I messed up and this is what happened."


Your son came forward with the information. Maybe not when you wanted him to , but he did. No screaming , no punishing , no shaming , he came forward on his own. That's a good thing.

[Katigre]

Is it a habit with him lying or was this more of a one-time thing? That would affect my response (we just came through a lying habit with DS).

[Psyche]

He's been denying/lying frequently lately And not coming clean unless we nag.

[Katigre]

Ok, that was DS too. Talking.talking.talking about it didn't get through to him. A combo of logical consequences/removal of privileges plus setting a longer-term goal has helped - he hasn't had issues with it since we did those things (it was a one-time consequence plus the longer-term plan talked about below).

I told him it was a matter of changing his habits and that takes time and practice, that he'd gotten into a habit of lying (which he had - it was several times a day about stupid little things, telling what really happened wasn't even occurring to him).

Anyway - he wanted to buy an Angry Birds game for the tablet with his money and we told him that he had to wait until it had been one week without lying for him to have permission to buy the game. That set a goal in his mind and was the time period where he turned the corner and stopped lying about things like washing hands/etc... That was two weeks ago and it hasn't been an issue since. For some reason that helped him connect his behavior to being thoughtful about it instead of default-untruth in a way that other approaches (talking with him about it, redoing the situation to give a chance to tell the truth, stating the truth to him, etc...) hadn't.

---------- Post added at 01:41 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:11 PM ----------

Note: I think that the delay in buying the game was far more effective in helping him be conscious of his words than the removal of privileges was (we only did that once).

[ArmsOfLove]

have you worked on teaching him the nuances of language? We talked about all sorts of language issues--what constitutes:

truth
lies
jokes
tricks
sarcasm
teasing
etc

When explaining lying I include important elements like it's telling an untruth to avoid trouble, or to deceive people--which is different from tricking because tricking is to tease the person and is supposed to be funny when they find out, but if the thing is negative and you're trying to protect yourself by deceiving someone, that's a lie. Then we talk about various scenarios and I say something and he guesses what category it falls into; then I give a category and he tries to think of something that would fit that category, etc.

When truth comes out, especially with a 6yo, I state very straight-faced: X is the Truth. You said Y and that is not the truth. When you say things that aren't true in order to avoid others being upset, that's a lie. It's very important to tell me the truth. If you lie I can't help you fix things. If you come to me, I can.