Help Me Stop My 5 Year Old Lying...

I like this article - gives some good ideas, and gets into the "why" so you can deal with the consequences part and the education part of discipline.

http://www.education.com/magazine/article/Power_Struggles...

First, if you haven't, please read the following article-- I found it incredibly eye-opening and a revelation:

http://nymag.com/news/features/43893/

This is going to be a lengthy post, but here goes- page 3 of this article was what most impressed me; scroll down to the study they did with kids, reading The Boy Who Cried Wolf to one group and George Washington and the Cherry Tree to the other. The children who retained the message that the parents so enjoyed their children's' honesty lied LESS. A whopping 43% less.

When we had some lying start in our house (to avoid punishment), I decided not to 'tackle the lying' but to encourage my son to tell the truth. First, I *never* ask him 'did you....?' if I already know the truth. No reason to try to trap him in a lie.
Next, if he denies something, I let him know "I'm not happy about what happened, however, I will be happy if you tell me the truth, so then we can fix the problem." We will still need to make amends for the wrong action, and there may be a consequence, but if lie is discovered, we don't threaten. Instead, we let him know that we are disappointed that he hasn't told us the truth and he does lose a valued privilege. For lies, which have been very, very rare, he does lose his 'stay-up' time (after stories, he gets quiet playtime for a while). We explain that this privilege is for when he is making 'big kid' choices, and that telling the truth is a big kid choice.

Lastly-- I do NOT lie to my son or husband, and I don't lie to others. He doesn't see me lie to people. If something happens which he might construe to be a "lie" (like, promising that we could play a game and then not having time for it), I am conscientious about addressing it with him-- even if he might get upset. "I know I told you that we could do X today, and we didn't have time for it. I want you to know that I remembered telling you that, so I'm going to write a note right now to remind us for tomorrow."

Yes, this is a lot of work.

With your daughter, whenever possible, do not give her a chance to lie. Call it as you see it. Every.single.time she tells the truth, even if she's done something wrong, you praise her: "thanks so much for telling me what really happened. It makes me so happy that you are telling me the truth. Now, how can we fix it?" If she feels her problems are fixable, she will be less likely to lie. If she feels that you love on her even more for telling the truth, and she gets that piece of positive feedback, she will be less likely to lie.

Our kids really often very much want to please us. In my opinion, ignoring her is only treating her like she is 'unworthy' and is a negative reinforcement of the behavior you don't want to see. You want to empower her to be able to be honest and to know that problems have solutions, so that in situations with teachers and others in life, she will feel confident in being able to tell the truth and solve the problem and move forward, instead of fearing that the only result is punishment instead of resolution and then further lying.

Another very specific thing you can do is to also create what my son's kindergarten teacher uses, which is a 'behavior plan'. She has the child write down both the problem (and why it was a problem) and the solution "the next time, I will...". This is a positive discipline tool which helps the child understand why their behavior was a problem for the adult/others, and they have a concrete direction for what to do in the future. The physical act of writing this stuff down may also be more effective, as the child has to cognitively process this stuff instead of just tuning out an angry parent. If we can stay calm and guide the child through this, there's a better chance that they will retain the helpful information.

Some might say to use hot sauce/soap on their tongues or lie to them. I'm thinking that this will only give them incentive to become better liars, personally.

ETA: I really liked Patricia's link-- thank you for sharing that, Patricia. The letter of apology for lying to others is a good idea, too!

Not sure if this will work, but my 5 yr old was whining a lot or even just talking in a sarcastic/sassy way. I made a "talk normally" jar. When he used a whiny or disrespectful tone of voice, we put a stone in the jar. I told him that when he gets to 10 stones, we will have no computer time all weekend. I thought it was going to take a while for it to work, but I only had to put 3 stones in it before he quit the habit completely. Of course, you could change the number of stones before giving a consequence or even start high and then gradually get lower. You could also turn it into a positive jar by giving her a stone every day she doesn't tell a lie and do something special after a certain number of days.

I love the fact that I don't have to nag. Having the jar on the kitchen counter became a reminder to my son without me saying a word. Plus, if he was whiny/disrespectful, I would just drop a stone in the jar without saying anything. Got the point across without fighting/explaining. Worked like a charm for us. Good luck.

That's not really, IMHO, a lying issue. That's a failure to take personal responsibility issue. My GD was in counseling for over a year because she refused to accept responsibility. She is doing much better now.

Not sure about a consequence, other than to make her tell you what happened without talking about anyone else. That's what I used to make GD do - tell me what happened but do not talk about anyone else. She could only talk about what SHE did.

When my daughter would blame something on someone else, when she was "found out" she had to do something extra nice for the person because she wronged them by blaming them for something they didn't do.

Besides handling the situation by not giving her an opportunity to lie (for example, not asking "who did this?" if you know who did!) and not focusing on a punishment for mistakes (but rather working together to fix what happened) she stopped blaming others for things almost immediately.

So if your daughter blames her sister and she really didn't do it, then your daughter would have to give her sister a toy of hers, or play with her for 15 minutes doing whatever her sister wanted, etc.

My 5 year old has just starting lying, but not because he is hiding something. He will tell me that he ripped a library book or did something else that would/could get him in trouble.

What he does deny or lie about is usually banal. For instance, I will see on his sheet after school that they read XYZ book. When I ask him about it, he says they didn't do that. If I gently add that it's on his sheet, he continues to deny it. Not a big deal, I drop the subject, but it happens a lot. The majority of my info from school comes from other kids and their mothers.

He also lies to get what he wants. Husband comes home and asks if he had any screen time. He says no, even though I specifically told him he was not to have another show that day. If I come out and see them watching a show, I just turn it off. He doesn't get angry, just moves on to the next thing. If I hadn't "caught" him, he would have watched the whole thing. And if I do catch him, he's not too phased.

Hmmm...this reminds me I've been meaning to ask my own discipline question about finding his currency. Positive rewards (bribery) work somewhat, positive rewards (praise) and negative not at all.

I am not a fan of withholding attention as a punishment.

In or house the #1 rule is : No lying. You don't get in trouble as long as you tell the truth.

Maybe you can talk with her and tell her about the new rule? Have a 'start over' so to speak? Let her know that from now on there is no punishment as long as she tells the truth.

My kids are 9, 7 & 5 and it still works to remind them (before they answer) that Santa can see them! Ha! It works like a charm!

I always went with whatever punishment you were lying to get out of is now doubled.

It worked

Every child learns differently. What works for some families-may not work for all families. This really works for ours. I have a 13 year old and 5 year old.
We have a chalkboard on our wall. There are 3 house rules always on there-and they are expected to follow them outside of the home as well.
1. Obey
2. Be kind
3. Be a helper

Also on the board there is a section that says "We choose Virtues" We choose a virtue a month to practice/discuss/point out etc. Say you picked "truthful" for this month. Then you could get books from the library about telling the truth-talk about why it is important to tell the truth. Then when there is a lie said-they are breaking rule #1-obeying (because they are not supposed to tell lies). Or they receive verbal praise for telling the truth.
There is a website you can google. We Choose Virtues-they have great stuff-i have never bought anything from them yet-but get most of my ideas and virtues from them. They have biblical/and non biblical. I love to use a corresponding verse beacause then its what Gods word says as well.
We have ours by our dinner table-so we can talk about it at dinner time.
I hope you find something that works for your daughter (: