Your Kid Lied to Your Face. Now What?

0:00The following podcast is a dear media production. Welcome back to another episode of After Bedtime, and today we are tackling a topic that is highly requested. Lying. Now, if your kid is lying to you, your first instinct is probably to figure out how to make them stop. Fair. But here's what most parents get wrong. The way you respond to lie can actually make your kid more likely to lie to you next time. So in this episode, I'm breaking down what's really happening when kids lie and the exact shifts that help you raise a kid who feels safe telling you the truth, especially when the truth is hard.

0:46If you are dealing with lying behavior right now in your house, this episode is going to be a game changer. I'm glad you're here. Let's get into it. Welcome to After Bedtime, where the house is finally quiet, but the real noise begins. The thoughts, the questions, the wondering if you're doing any of this right. We're Kristen and Dina, child behavior experts, moms and co-founders of Big Little Feelings. And we're not here to give you more pressure or perfect parenting energy. Nope. We're here to tell the truth, the unfiltered, beautiful, brutal truth about what it means to raise kids. and re-raise ourselves in the process.

1:25Because parenting isn't just about sleep schedules and snack hacks. It's about healing. It's about breaking cycles. It's about becoming the kind of adult you want your kids to grow up to be. This is the place where we say the quiet parts out loud, and we're so glad that you're here. Okay, before we dive deep into lying, you guys, it happened. That one moment where the temperature drops below 72 degrees and I become the most spiritually fulfilled basic bitch alive. I don't really care that it's technically still August. If I walk outside and there is even the slightest whisper of crispness in the air, it's fall.

2:01Summer's dead to me. Put her belongings in a box. She's gone. And then suddenly I'm like, should we go apple picking? And the reality is like, no, I don't even need apples. I've never in my entire adult life required 37 apples at once. And yet every year I'm going to drag my family and go make them pay$48 to go through an apple orchard. And I'll be picking apples off the tree like in the olden days. Just like in a Nancy Meyers movie, I recently inherited a struggling cider farm. It's a whole fantasy for me. And then obviously I need a pumpkin. Not just one pumpkin. I need a pumpkin family. I need like the classic orange pumpkin.

2:41I need that weird little white pumpkin. the teeny tiny decorative one that has like no purpose, the bumpy wart one. You know what I mean, right? Like I need the whole crew on my doorstep immediately. And one on my kitchen counter, the outside the inside combo. And listen, I know pumpkin spice is technically embarrassing now. I know that. But unfortunately, I was forged in the fires of 1998, my friends. I grew up in the era where Bath & Body Works Cucumber Melon Body Spray counted as a personality. And it was my personality. We slathered ourselves in roll-on body glitter. And we walked into middle school smelling like country apple.

3:22And we were confident. So yes, when someone hands me a coffee drink that kind of smells like a melted cinnamon candle got dripped into it, I'm going to drink it. I live for fall. And like, don't even get me started on when I was little. I love fall. I love the whole idea of like getting your school supplies? Like you remember the little jelly roll pens that we all needed? Do you remember a Lisa Frank trapper keeper? Okay, with the dolphins leaping through a galaxy for literally no reason? Do you remember decorating your locker with a magnetic mirror so that you could reapply your Dr. Pepper lip smacker?

3:56Right? I don't know if we actually want to go back into that chapter. It really depends on like how it went for you. For me, I liked all these things, but like the actual experience, I think I'm okay to not go back there. But like, you know what I mean, right? Britney Spears, NSYNC, your AIM. We all had the craziest screen names. You literally just take your three favorite things and jam it into a phrase. And you're like, boom, that's me, the softball pug loving gal. And you would just pray that your parents would not unplug the internet before your crush came on. You know, that was devastating.

4:29Anyways, it did It dropped below 72 degrees this week. And yes, we instantly put on Nightmare Before Christmas. We have Halloween songs playing for breakfast now. I have a little waffle press in the shape of a pumpkin that we are now using every single day. Like, I am here for fall. Hell yeah. Throw a scarf on me. Let's go. So call me basic. I accept I am basic. And I'm thriving. I regret nothing. Okay, friends. Enough about my spiral and my trip down memory lane. I hope you enjoyed that. we are going to go deep now online. There was one back to school tradition that I absolutely loved growing up as a kid, and it was perusing the Isles of Ross with my mom.

5:14If you have not experienced this yet, it's life changing. And I don't know about you, but like when you are a little kid going back to school, your style matters. All your clothes represent you. It feels really big, like in a fun way, though. They've got a new favorite band, a new hobby, a new phrase that they say 900 times a day. And most importantly, a very specific idea of what they want to wear this year so that everyone can finally understand who they are. I actually love that about back to school season. And Ross makes it incredibly easy for them to find themselves, to find their style. And the best part is it doesn't break the bank for you.

5:58Let them have fun. Let them go wild and pick the things that they love. Ross has backpacks, clothes, school supplies, even college dorm room stuff. Ross has everything for back to school this year. And it's all style that's at 20 to 60 % off other retailers' prices. Chef's kiss. We love this. So let your kid walk back into school this year with the exact same name they had in May, but according to them, an entirely new person. Find your nearest Ross at rossstores.com and go experience the magic yourself. I have discovered that there are two completely different versions of me. There's regular me, and regular me is answering Slack messages and finding somebody's missing shoe and thinking about dinner while I'm eating lunch and somehow carrying 17 completely unrelated objects from one room to another.

6:51And then there is vacation me. The problem is that vacation me usually requires an actual vacation. Flights, hotel, packing, childcare, planning. And it doesn't have to be that way. Enter Resort Pass. Resort Pass basically lets you have the best part of the vacation without even taking a vacation. You can literally book access to luxury hotel pools and spas and cabanas for the day. So no overnight stay and no membership fees. Passes start at$25 and you can book in under five minutes. And they even offer same day bookings because we have one million things going on. And when you find that little window, you got to take it.

7:38Resort Pass partners directly with more than 2 ,500 luxury hotels and resorts across the U.S., Caribbean, and Mexico, and more than 6 million guests have already taken a resort pass staycation. So do a girls' day or take your partner, take the kids, and make a random Saturday feel like a summer vacay? You don't need to earn an entire vacation before you're allowed to have one really, really good day for you. Visit resortpass.com slash BLF to get$20 off your first booking of$100 or more. That's R-E-S-O-R-T-P-A-S-S dot com slash BLF for$20 off. Resort pass. The day is yours. Okay, there is a very specific meal in my house that I call.

8:23I have absolutely nothing left to give dinner. And to be clear, this is not the same thing as regular dinner. This is the dinner that happens when it is like 5.42 and someone's crying because their brother looked at them. Somebody needs me to find a water bottle that they're literally holding. And I suddenly remember, oh, right, these people expect to eat again. And this is exactly why I need a few foods in my fridge at all times that require approximately zero executive functioning. And one of mine right now is egg life. Egg life. Egg white wraps. If you don't know about these yet, you are going to thank me.

9:03I can basically throw anything into one of these things. Eggs and cheese in the morning, turkey and whatever vegetables we have for lunch, leftovers at dinner. I have even gone sweet with them. Okay. Like when I want something quick, throw that Nutella, cut up a banana, a strawberry. It's a beautiful thing. So basically these wraps are made from egg whites, not flour, and they're a total game changer. They are packed with protein. And I know protein's all the rage right now because it's really good for you. It's low in carbs. It has over 11 grams of protein and less than three grams of carbs. Egg Life egg white wraps make it easy to sneak high quality protein into your favorite meals and snacks.

9:42And that, my friends, is the kind of back to school support that I need. Find Egg Life wraps chilling in the fridge at Aldi, Whole Foods, Kroger, Target, Walmart, and more. Visit egglifefoods.com to find a retailer near you. All right, besties, there is a moment in parenting. that can make a completely reasonable adult absolutely lose their mind. Your kid lies to you. And I'm not talking about the adorable three-year-old standing there with chocolate on their face kind of lie. I mean the kind where you know, they know you know, you are looking directly at the evidence and your kid looks you dead in the eyes and says, I didn't do it.

10:29and something happens inside of you because suddenly you are not standing in the kitchen talking to your five-year-old anymore. Your brain has fast-forwarded 10 years. If they can lie to me this easily now, what happens when they're 15? Will they lie about where they are? Will they lie about drinking? Will they get into someone's car when they know that they shouldn't and lie about it? Will something happen to them and they won't tell me? Will I be able to trust my own kid? And that is why a tiny lie can feel so enormous to us. We think we're reacting to what just happened. But most of the time, we're reacting to the future that we are terrified this moment predicts.

11:12And so we do what scared parents do. We try to shut this behavior down immediately. You do not lie to me. Lying makes it so much worse. If I can't trust you, you're going to lose privileges. we start to think, okay, I need to make lying feel really bad right now so that my kid learns to never do this again. It feels so incredibly logical, especially if that's how things were handled when you were little. Okay? I get it. But I'm going to put on my child therapist hat right now. We're going to dive deep into this. And here's the truth. If your biggest parenting goal is raising a kid who comes to you with the truth when the truth is terrifying and very hard to tell, then you have to be very careful about teaching them that telling you the truth is terrifying because someday this won't be about a cookie.

12:04Someday the truth might be I cheated on the test. My friend brought alcohol, right? Or it's something like I got in the car even though I knew I wasn't supposed to. I looked at something online. I sent the picture. Someone touched me. I screwed up and I don't know what to do. And before your kid tells you any of those things, there will be a split second where their brain asks one question. Can I tell my parent? And that answer isn't built when they're 16. We're building it right now in these younger years. So today, I want to completely change the way that we're thinking about lying. We're going to talk about why kids lie in the first place and why lying isn't automatically evidence that you're raising a dishonest kid.

12:50In fact, I'm going to give you four completely different kinds of lies because the kid who lies because they're feeling scared means something very, very different from the kid who lies impulsively or strategically. We're going to talk about the huge mistake that parents make when we ask questions we already know the answer to, why you do not need to force a confession to teach honesty, and what the research tells us about what happens when kids become afraid of the consequences of telling the truth. And most importantly, I'm going to give you exactly what to do and say when your kid looks directly at you in your face and lies to you without becoming permissive, without letting them get away with it, and without accidentally making honesty feel dangerous.

13:33Because by the end of this episode, I don't want you walking away with a better way to stop lying. I want you walking away knowing how to build something much bigger. A kid who knows that telling the truth may be uncomfortable. There may be accountability. You may be disappointed. But when something goes terribly wrong, they can still call you. The goal isn't a kid who thinks, I better make sure my parents never find out, right? The goal is really a kid who thinks, oh shit, I need to tell my parent. So let's get into it. Okay, you know when I do a solo podcast episode, I like to keep things flowing.

14:15I'm going to cut the fluff. We're going to get what we need and get out. So part one, I need you to understand that your kid lying is not proof that you are raising a liar. I want to take this one fear right off the table here. Your kid lying doesn't automatically mean that you have a character problem on your hands. In fact, we're going to get a little nerdy here. The ability to lie is partly connected to cognitive development. Like when you think about a lie and what it actually requires, it's kind of crazy. Your kid has to understand, I know something that you don't know, and I might be able to change what you believe.

14:54Like that is pretty sophisticated, actually. It involves theory of mind, which is basically the ability to understand that another person has thoughts and knowledge and beliefs that are separate from your own. Lying also uses executive function skills. Your kid has to stop themselves from saying what really happened, come up with another version, and then if you start asking follow-up questions, remember the lie well enough to keep it going. That's kind of a lot. Kind of impressive. Also really inconvenient when you're the parent though. So when your preschooler starts lying, the takeaway isn't automatically, oh my god, I'm raising a dishonest person.

15:31Sometimes that takeaway is simply, oh, you just realized I can't see inside your brain. Developmentally fascinating, if you ask me. Absolutely enraging when you're staring at your own kid's name written in crayon across the wall. Yes, both can be true. And I know this personally because I have three kids, which means I basically live inside a tiny lab. There have been moments where one of my kids has done something directly in front of me and then immediately told me that he didn't do it. Like, I was there. And I could feel that immediate surge of, do not lie to me. Because lying honestly hits us parents differently than a lot of other behaviors.

16:11If my kid hits, I can usually understand the mechanics pretty quickly. He got mad. He got impulsive. His body moved before his brain caught up. But lying feels really personal. It honestly feels like, okay, you looked at me, you knew the truth, and deliberately chose to deceive me. And the therapist part of my brain is going, get curious about the function and the behavior. And meanwhile, the mom part of my brain is going, kid is doing it on purpose. But the question that helps me come back down is this. What problem is this lie solving for my kid right now? Because most kids aren't lying because they woke up thinking, okay, today I'm going to go dismantle the family's moral foundation.

16:56usually the lie is doing a job. It's helping them avoid something or get something, protect something, escape something, or manage a feeling that they don't know what to do with. And once I understand the job that the lie is doing, I become a whole lot more effective at responding to it. So part two, my friends, stop treating every lie like it's the same thing. Now, this is where a lot of parenting advice loses me. They say, teach your kid that honesty matters. Yes, obviously. But to me, that isn't actually enough information to help you in the moment. Like if you come to me as a therapist and you say, my child screams constantly, I would never just say, well, teach them not to scream.

17:40I would want to understand what the screaming is doing. Are they terrified? Are they furious? Is it sensory overload? Are they trying to get their iPad or are they missing another communication skill right now? Right. It's like the same behavior, but underneath it, there can be completely different reasons. And lying works the exact same way. So instead of treating every lie like it's one giant category called dishonesty, I want you to start asking what kind of lie are you actually looking at? So let's go over them. Bucket one, we've got the developmental lie. This is classic little kid lying.

18:19Did you eat the cupcake? No. No, there's frosting in your eyebrows, my guy. Did you knock that over? No, a dinosaur did it. Okay, like it's such an obvious lie. Because a four-year-old can be capable of saying something false on purpose without having the mature impulse control, foresight, moral reasoning, or narrative skills that we would expect from an older kid. And this is really important. knowing that lying is wrong isn't the same thing as being able to tell the truth every single time you want to avoid a consequence. Like, think of it this way. Adults know plenty of things, and we struggle to do it consistently.

19:02Children are definitely not exempt from that. So with a young kid, I'm not delivering a 15-minute keynote on integrity. You know what I mean? I'm keeping it short. We're keeping it concrete. Something like, listen, you really wanted that cupcake. You ate it before it was time. And then you told me you didn't. We're going to practice now telling the truth. That's it. We're not going to take it too far like the whole how can I ever trust you again thing. We teach the skill and we move on when they're little. In fact, with little kids, it's best not to have a big reaction and not to make it a big thing because that makes it feel confusing.

19:42It makes it feel like a thrill. They're more likely to repeat behaviors that we make a big deal out of. So we're just gonna neutrally state what happened and move on. The truth is the truth. That's it. Bucket two, we've got the fear-based lie. Now this one's huge. Sometimes your kid isn't thinking, how can I trick my parents? They're thinking, how do I get out of what is about to happen to me? Like, okay, did you break this? No. Did you get a bad grade? No. Did your teacher email me? No. Did you hit your brother? No. So the main question here, if you're seeing these types, is what does this kid expect will happen if they do tell the truth?

20:27Because maybe the truth means that dad explodes. Maybe the truth means that mom goes really cold and gives you the silent treatment and gives you dirty looks all afternoon that make you feel horrible. Maybe the truth means humiliation. Or maybe the truth means a punishment that feels enormous. Maybe telling the truth means seeing disappointment on your face and they just don't know how to tolerate that feeling. So this is where research gets uncomfortable because our instincts as adults is often, if I make lying feel painful enough, they'll stop doing it. But that strategy can accidentally teach a very different lesson.

21:09Okay, I'm going to break down a little study for us. So researchers studied young kids in two school environments with two very different disciplinary climates. When these little kids were given a chance to peek at a toy and then were asked whether they had peeked, the kids in the more punitive environment were more likely to lie. And they were better at maintaining the lie. Now, that doesn't mean that every consequence creates lying. And it doesn't mean that discipline is bad. It was one study comparing specific environments, and we shouldn't stretch it beyond what it tells us. But it really should make us think.

21:44Because sometimes when we believe we're teaching, don't lie. The kid might be actually learning, next time, make sure you lie better. Make sure they can't prove it. Very, very different lesson there. Bucket number three, the impulsive cover-up. This is the lie that comes out before your kid is practically, like, processed the question. Here's some examples. Did you push your brother? No. Immediate automatic done. This can actually show up in a lot of younger kids and in kids who struggle with impulse control. Hi to my sweet little ADHD besties. And here's the deal. If I respond to that split second no, like I just uncovered a month's long conspiracy, okay, I'm probably massively overshooting what's actually happening.

22:28Sometimes I literally give the child a reset. Okay, I'm going to ask you again. You don't have to answer fast. Take a second. What happened? That tiny pause can change everything because I'm not trying to catch my kid. I'm trying to help their brain slow down enough to tolerate telling me something really uncomfortable. Keeping it calm, as low pressure as possible, will really help their brain in these moments. Bucket four, the strategic lie. Now my friends, we're in a different territory. This is a kid who knowingly uses a lie to get access to something or get around a limit or hide something that they know they weren't supposed to do.

23:10Example, I finished my homework because they want Xbox. I brushed my teeth because they want to go downstairs. Mom said yes, because dad might believe it. That needs accountability. And I want to say this really clearly because sometimes people here understand the behavior and they think it actually means excuse the behavior. And it doesn't. You can understand exactly why your kid lied and still hold a very firm boundary around lying. Here's the example. You really wanted to play Xbox, so you told me that the homework was done when it wasn't. I need to know that when you're saying something, it's true.

23:52I want to believe you. I know that we can do this. So tonight, we're going to check it together before screens. Accountability. But what I'm not going to go in and say is, you're a liar. You're manipulative. I can never trust you because the second I turn a behavior into an identity, I make it harder for my kid to grow out of it. I don't want my kid walking away with, I am dishonest. I want it to be more like, listen, I made a dishonest choice. I can make a different one next time. So the way we respond really does shape their inner voice, and that makes a huge difference in the whole situation.

24:31Now, moving on. Part three, we're going to stop asking questions that you already know the answer to. This is a really sneaky one for a lot of us parents. It's one of the easiest changes that we can immediately make, it makes a huge difference. But we got to know what we're looking for. If you already know what happened, stop turning it into a quiz. You watched your kid color on the table. So if you walk over and ask, did you color on the table? Why are we asking? We know that they did it. What are we testing here? Because now, instead of dealing with one behavior, I've accidentally created an opportunity for a second one.

25:07So try this instead. Listen, I see marker drawing on the table. Markers are for paper. Let's clean it up. Or here another example that happens in my house. If you watch your kid hit their sibling, we're not going to ask, did you hit him? Instead, we're going to come in factual, neutral. I saw you hit your brother. Listen, it's okay to feel upset. Hitting is not the way we handle things. Let's go take some time to calm down. Let's check on him and then we'll figure out together what happened. Parents accidentally invite kids to lie constantly by asking them to confirm facts that are already established.

25:46And then we're furious when they take the exit ramp that we just handed them. When you know, state what you know. You don't really need a confession. You can just handle the situation that happened. Now, moving into part four, pay attention to what happens when they do tell you the truth. This is so crucial. Here is where we accidentally wreck the exact thing that we say that we're wanting. Your kid walks into the room and says, mommy, I broke it. And you immediately go, you what? I told you not to touch that. Why would you do that? And then three days later, you're saying, why don't you just tell me things?

26:25Well, they're conducting research and you just gave them data. This is the distinction that I want every parent to remember. Making it safe to tell you the truth doesn't mean removing accountability. It just means making the relationship safe enough to survive the truth. And you can say, thank you for telling me. I know that was probably hard. We still need to deal with what happened. That's a sweet spot. I'm so glad that you told me and we have to fix it. Both things get to exist. And the research around punishment and truth-telling gives us a lot of reason to be thoughtful here too. In an experimental study with kids ages four to eight, when the kids were expecting punishment to happen, those kids had less internal motivation to tell the truth.

27:14And again, I'm not saying never give your kid consequences. I'm saying fear cannot be the entire honesty strategy. It doesn't work. When our kids are scared, they're not learning. They're not able to reflect. They are not able to grow. They are just going to be surviving and surviving the situation and you. Because every kid who has something difficult to admit is making some version of this calculation. What is going to happen to me if I tell them? We want the answer to be something may happen because of what you did, but the relationship isn't going anywhere. The relationship itself is solid and can handle hard things together without breaking.