The child is lying. What to do?

You can often hear: children never lie. This is what mothers most often say, confident in the correctness of their child, who told them their own version of the conflict in kindergarten or at school. Well, like, «he started first.»

The point, of course, is that a person is usually inclined to consider himself and his loved ones right. But not only in this. There is a long tradition of idealization of childhood and the child. A child is both simple-hearted and innocent, there is no evil in him, and in general childhood is the happiest time of life.

First, not the happiest. Many believe that, on the contrary, the most tragic. Secondly, children, especially in collective actions, are especially cruel and selfishly insensitive. And of course they lie. Today, let’s try to understand the latter.

• Why do we need to lie

The causes and cases of lying are extremely different from each other, and this requires a different attitude from us.

Lying is often indirect evidence of internal discomfort. The child is afraid of public reproaches or punishment. The reason for this discomfort is not so much in the offense itself, which he himself experiences, but in our reaction to it. A diary with deuces or remarks is lost (computer diaries being introduced now do not eliminate the cause of fear). They come up with an imaginary reason for a fight, skipping a lesson or a bad grade. “Well, I said everything correctly, only I made a mistake in the number. And she…»

Such a lie, it must be admitted, is solely our fault. The offending son does not need punishment. However, not in a deliberate justification (which is sometimes even worse). Not in the demand for public repentance, but in sympathy and understanding. He is guilty, yes, but it is better if one of his relatives shares this guilt with him. And everything can be fixed. In this case, there will be no ground for lies. Guilty, but not alone — that’s the point.

• Is it good to punish your child?

It happens that a child tells a lie out of a desire to please and please his parents. The daughter or son subtly noticed that the parents were dissatisfied with the methods and behavior of the class teacher. And now, day after day, he brings more and more terrible stories to the house: “Today Olga Ivanovna again …”

Everything is bad here. And voluptuous thirst for denunciation, and parental gullibility and indulgence. And the very manner of complaining came, of course, from the parental habit of always looking for someone else to blame.

There is another form of lies, about which smart parents say: yes, he is not lying, but fantasizing. Indeed, at a certain age, almost all children turn into little Khlestakovs. At every step they compose unprecedented stories about themselves, brag, come up with some kind of second, parallel life. A girl, for example, excitedly says that before lessons, at six in the morning she goes to synchronized swimming classes (she envied some of her peers). Or that she, like Pippi Longstocking, is the strongest girl in the world, and walks for visual resemblance with one foot on the sidewalk and the other on the pavement. Or that it is she who dubs Hannah Montana in the famous American TV series. Here, by the way, perhaps where this virulence comes from: the heroine of the film also lives a double life: during the day she is a teenage schoolgirl named Miley Stewart, and at night she is the famous pop singer Hannah Montana.

But the main reason for such a lie-fantasy, of course, is much more serious. It is in childhood that the gap between desires and possibilities is catastrophically large. The scale of the claims is huge, but there are still no funds, tools for their implementation. Physics is weak, but I want to be an Olympic champion. But such a desire, at the very least, can still be transferred to the future and for the time being be content with rivalry with peers.

The real trouble is that the child cannot verbalize his state, his experiences and thoughts. Evgeny Schwartz said: “The complexity of the spiritual life of children is incomprehensible even to close observers. The most complicated and the simplest sensations are very close. Silent, tongue-tied geniuses whose speeches evoke only emotion and laughter in adults.

• I lie all the time

They perceive their situation as acutely inadequate. Therefore, for example, they tend to overestimate their age, now and then they measure growth, they are drawn to the company of their elders. Prohibitions, the children’s daily routine weigh them down («it’s time to go to bed»), there is a steady desire for independence, which is often manifested by disobedience, risky self-will, deliberate familiarity and even rudeness.

One of the forms of this rush to the dream is the anticipatory work of fantasy. Catching a child at this moment in a lie is unproductive and dangerous. It is better to give a sign with a smile or an inoffensive observation that you understand this game, even get involved in this game, imperceptibly giving it a playful tone. And at the same time, emphasize any real achievement of the child, saturate his life with actions, each of which can lead to success. Because there is still a danger that fantasy will begin to replace and crowd out real life.