TBRI® Correcting Strategies: Little White Lies

Do you want to know a secret? Children lie. They all do. Foster children, adopted children, biological children, and any child in between. Stretching the truth is a normal part of human development starting with kids between the ages of three and four. This developmental stage is what Erik Erikson called Initiative vs. Guilt and is the time when children are exploring both good and bad, learning to exert control in the world, and exploring their environments. Part of this process, for children, is experimenting with the effects of not being truthful. They are wondering how mom or dad will respond and what the consequences might be.

Lying behavior can be exacerbated by abuse, neglect and trauma. Children from hard places come from homes where parenting was unpredictable and their needs were not consistently met, even if they don't remember those early details. As a result, many children develop methods of getting their needs met that work for them while they are in crisis, but don’t jive well in a healthy family setting.

Let’s unpack this a little more. You are an adoptive parent of an eight-year-old and a biological parent of two older children. Your older kiddos have come to you to say that their Nintendo switches have been broken and you have reason to believe that culprit is their youngest sibling. This seems easy enough to solve (because you are trained in TBRI® and you are basically a professional parent) but you ask your youngest about the devices, and they tell you they know nothing about it. Talk about cognitive dissonance! You have several reasons to believe it was them, but this little one is incredibly convincing. What gives? Children reared in trauma learn survival skills. Lying serves children to keep them from being abused by their caregivers, to keep schools and neighbors from learning about abuse at home, and to protect the family. For these children, lying absolutely serves a purpose.

The key for parents when you are faced with this sort of baffling behavior is to remember that actual safety does not equal felt safety. It takes about a month per year of life to see noticeable behavioral changes, and this increases with an increased trauma history. However, you can speed healing along by really monitoring how you react to lying behavior. Check yourself, and respond playfully even if it doesn’t feel natural. Handle the situation as soon as you learn about it. The longer you wait, to harder this is going to be for both of you. Get on their eye level, make physical contact, and let them know that everyone is dishonest sometimes, but it hurts family members and it needs to be made right. Have them walk through what really happened and use puppets or stuffed animals to role play and take the pressure off. Finally, make sure they know that this is about behavior, not about them as a person. You love them regardless.

Sound familiar? IDEAL response, y'all! Works every time!*

*This is not actually a true statement. It works most of the time, which is why we carry lots of different tools in our parenting toolbox.