Q. What can we do about lying?
A. Often a child’s lying, like cheating, shoplifting, stealing, evasion and many other ‘hiding’ behaviors, is rooted in a felt need to hide themselves. From a sense of shame about their own worthiness, a child (or adult) might say if they could, “I’m not good enough to be known for who I really am, and that means my (new) parents would get rid of me if they really, truly knew how worthless I feel. So eventually, when people really see me, then I will have to get my needs met by sneaking. Under the table. On the sly. By hook or by crook.”
With adopted children, this can flow from a nagging fear that what happened once can always happen again — being “given away” because they were “not good enough to keep”. So they are sure they must practice surviving on their own, under the radar, for when the nightmare of abandonment happens again. With incest survivors, the unconscious need to hide ones identity from others can feel like life or death.
One time an adoptive mother with her own horrid childhood lied to me in session. I had suggested some communication exercises for her family. She replied, “Oh we do that all the time at home, let’s just move on.”
You do?
“Yeah, let’s just move on.”
I’m curious. When do you do it?
“Well…..we really don’t, but I just told you we did so you’d move on to something else,” and she grinned like her teenager whom she complained was compulsively lying.
(From my perspective this was solid gold.)
“You lied to me!” I exclaimed in mock horror, opening my eyes wide.
“No, I didn’t,” she giggled. “I told you the truth in the end.” She was 46.
“You LIED to me! And you ENJOYED it!!” I played this like a hooked sailfish.
“No, come on, I didn’t LIE!” (i.e., Finally someone caught me!)
“And now you’re lying about LYING to me!! Like a TEENAGER!! WHOA!!!” At these words she collapsed into giggles.
This playful incident became part of our therapy history. We referenced it many times as a crucial deepening of our therapeutic relationship: the day she was caught in a lie, but not shamed for it.
"NOW what?"
What would be an equivalent response to a child’s lying?
Dan Hughes once role-played a nice response during a training. In the role-play he neither shamed the “child”, nor accepted the lie — he found a balance: “Hey, you’re giving me baloney! You got any cheese in there? C’mon, hand it over!”
The message: 1. You’re trying to put one over on me….2. I won’t even PRETEND to buy it….3. And I sure like you!
"Baloney!"
This good message offers the child both a challenge to the lie (I’m not stupid) and face-saving through humor (I still like you). We can use this formula with teens and adults as well.
An exception might be when the child is lying from within deep depression. In children this can appear as fierce hostility. “I never took anything! (while hiding stolen item behind back.) I hate you! Get out of here! You’re stupid!!” At those times responding with playfulness will sound to them like sarcasm. I will cover responding to depressive lying in another blog — it can require some reflection on our part to find the voice we (and they) need.