6 Pieces of Expert Advice to Follow When Your Child Starts Lying. Family Education.

Sneaky behavior such as lying and stealing are some of the hardest issues for parents to deal with. When your kid lies and sneaks around, it can feel like a betrayal and begins to feel like a moral issue. You start to question their grapheme. You lot may offset to dislike your child.

Let's face it—many of united states were guilty of some type of sneaking around when we were younger. Nosotros may have stolen cigarettes from our parents. Maybe we lied well-nigh where we were going or who we were going to be with. We may have even idea we were justified at the time and came up with all kinds of reasons to explicate our misbehavior.

Don't Accept Sneaky Behavior Personally and Stay At-home

These are the times when parents need to be able to footstep dorsum, focus on the behavior, and not have information technology personally. Lying and sneaky beliefs is not okay, simply it doesn't brand your child a bad person. Instead, information technology means your child has a behavior trouble that needs to be addressed.

Kids are non existence sneaky to hurt you. They're being sneaky to become what they want or to solve a problem that they take. Either way, being sneaky is non the right approach, and it'southward your job to requite consequences and to charabanc them to solve their problems the right fashion.

Stay calm and focused on the beliefs. If at-home, the state of affairs will be much easier to deal with. Even if y'all experience as if it'south a personal expose, endeavor to take the emotion out of the word with your child. Just exist pragmatic and objective and focus on the behavior and the consequences. Think near how a good boss would handle things—professional, calm, and honest.

Call Out Sneaky Behavior When It Happens

When you catch your child in a lie or doing something sneaky, tell them immediately. Remind them that the behavior is unacceptable and issue the consequence.

If you call up your child has been lying to you and sneaking around only you lot don't have the details or the total story, let them know your suspicions. Tell them that y'all're going to follow up to get more information and that you will be monitoring their behavior more than closely.

Have a Trouble-Solving Conversation With Your Kid

After, when things are calm, you lot will demand to have a chat with your kid about how to solve their problems without resorting to lying or sneaking. Give yourself fourth dimension to prepare for this important discussion, and practice information technology when you are calm and without getting emotional.

A style to begin these problem-solving conversations is to have your child do some "homework" ahead of time. Inquire them to recall about their behavior and be prepared, either verbally or in writing, to let you know what they were thinking when they did this, what the problems were with the behavior, and how they might behave in this state of affairs in the future. Information technology's e'er most helpful when these ideas come direct from your child.

Related content: The Surprising Reason for Bad Child Behavior

How to Handle Lying

It's helpful to remember that kids don't empathise how hurtful lies can be. Their thinking is young, and they generally lie without even because how these lies bear on others.

The truth is, kids know lying is wrong. But they lie anyway. And they commonly lie because they just have a really poor way of solving problems. They lie to go out of a consequence considering they remember information technology's their merely choice left.

If you look at lying equally a problem-solving effect, and non a moral one, yous can help your kid develop strategies so they tin can stop lying in the future. Don't spend all your energy stressing the correct and wrong nature of lying. Conversations well-nigh correct and wrong have a place, but the well-nigh effective approach is to focus the conversation about finding a better mode to solve problems that don't entail lying.

If your child'southward lying seems to be getting worse or is especially worrisome, there may be a need to reach out to others in their life to find out what's really going on. Allow your child know that y'all are concerned and suspicious of their beliefs and that you will be keeping an middle on them.

They won't like this, only you have to let them know that y'all care almost them. Tell them they have to exist true with y'all. You can even tell them that as a parent it's your job to assist them follow the rules in your habitation.

Related content: How to Bargain with Lying in Children and Teens.

How to Handle Stealing

If your child's sneaky behavior has hurt someone else, this needs to be addressed. Stealing is an instance of one of these behaviors that hurts others. If you find that your child has stolen something, the consequences need to exercise the following:

1. Address the misbehavior – stealing
2. Make apology to the person who was hurt

For example, if your son is caught taking coin from his sis, your conversation with your son should set a consequence for the stealing. He might lose all electronics privileges until he makes amends to his sis. Then, he must make amends to his sis by paying her back and then adding an additional gesture, like doing her chores for a week.

If your child sneaks coin from your wallet, this is too stealing. You tell them that the behavior is unacceptable and that you will be watching your money much more than closely.

If your child continues to steal from you, it's fourth dimension to endeavour to find out what he is spending this coin on. This may lead to uncovering other behaviors that will take to be addressed. There could be issues with drugs or booze.

Related content: Kids Stealing from Parents: What You Need to Know

Sneaking the Phone

If your kid sneaks her phone at night and texts into the wee hours with her friend, at that place will be a natural consequence for her because she'll be tired the next twenty-four hours. Merely recall, you control the phone. You're paying the bills. And you can and should allow your child know that she has broken the telephone rules and won't accept the privilege of using information technology for a reasonable amount of time (depending on the age of your child and whether this is a 1-time thing or a blueprint of misbehavior).

Related content: How to Give Kids Consequences That Work

Sneaking Out at Night

If your child sneaks out at night, you lot need to reiterate your rules around his curfew and then consider the risk of the behavior. Is your 15-year-one-time son sneaking out to his friend's house just to hang out? Or is your teenage girl taking off every dark to go to her older boyfriend'south house where drugs and alcohol are present? Some behaviors and patterns of sneaky behavior are much more unsafe and risky than others and have to be dealt with more seriously.

When your child is calm and can talk about what he or she did, it's useful to attempt to find out what the motivation was. Was information technology to exist with a young man or girlfriend? To go loftier? To accept sex? Or just to hang out with a group of kids?

Reiterate to them that the sneaky beliefs is non allowed and goes against your house rules. Your chat needs to include a brusque and directly give-and-take of the risks and dangers of the behavior and your business concern about your child's safety.

The consequences and chat should match the level of safety business organisation. For case, if your kid was on her phone all night and it's a get-go-time offense, taking away phone privileges for the weekend while she practices good behavior and goes to bed on time may exist adequate. If your child is sneaking out of the house and information technology becomes a pattern, the consequences need to go more serious.

Have a Consistent Message About Sneaky Beliefs

Tell your child that lying and other sneaky behaviors are non acceptable in your family unit. Explain that he needs to find better means of trouble-solving than sneaking around your rules. State your family'south values and your expectations for your child within the family. Remember, while sneaky behavior is normal for kids, it's not okay. Y'all can simply say:

"Lying is not a adept way to solve your problems. Nosotros don't allow this in our family."

You child won't similar it when you face sneaky behavior. They volition initially resent existence caught or being suspected of the beliefs. And they definitely won't similar the uncomfortable conversations and consequences that follow. But that's okay. By doing so you lot are doing your chore every bit a parent. Only be at-home, matter-of-fact, and clear about the misbehavior and the consequence. And then passenger vehicle them to healthier means of solving their problems.

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Source: https://www.empoweringparents.com/article/i-caught-my-child-lying-how-to-manage-sneaky-behavior-in-kids/