I know that there are dishonest men in the world and before they were men they were probably dishonest boys. I remember with our oldest son, maybe a time or two when he was less than truthful. The rest of the time, he may have been unpleasant but at least he told it like it was. Our girls are much more deceptive. I will admit that as a youngster, I too had to learn the hard lesson about being caught in a lie. It happened to me more than once actually. Sometimes I had to repeat a lesson before the lesson sunk in! Somewhere along the line I decided that I was made so uncomfortable with that feeling and was so unnerved by the fact that lies just snow ball, subconsciously I just came to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth it, now, so many years later, while I’m not so old that I have forgotten experimenting with lying, it is among the things on my ever growing pet peeves list. I don’t like being lied to. I don’t do it, and I don’t like when it’s done to me. Our girls both, but especially one seems to be practicing it a lot lately.
At first it was innocent enough, whose dishes are these..not mine…who left the food out in the kitchen…not me. I didn’t drop and break my cell phone again Dad, my friend Mattie stepped on it. Annoying, yet harmless and sort of expected in a multiple child family. Then as we started to spread our wings a little bit, it began to be things like were parents of their friends really home when they asked to go over to visit them, were they going where they said they were going, things like that. Then one of our girls, the one who started out wanting to be a cheerleader and a popular girl, had her Dad drop her off at what the school referred to as a lock down. It was an after dance co-Ed parent chaperoned sleep over at the school. Did she stay there? No. She ended up going to a friend’s house and staying there without contacting us to ask us if that was ok or tell us her whereabouts. She was grounded for that one. Later, same girl sneaks out of her Mother’s house, takes her Mother’s car (not old enough to drive yet) and picks up a friend and goes on a joyride. Hit a ditch, damaged the car, lied to her sister as to what happened to the car, got caught, got grounded for that one. Same girl, one fine summer day spends the day at our club swimming pool, with her then boyfriend, calls her Dad, tells him they are going to a burger joint for lunch. Dad has a tracker program on our daughters’ phones, he checked and she wasn’t at the burger joint she as at the boy’s house. Oh dear. Grounded again. This particular daughter I’m sure still stretches it from time to time, but I think for the most part has decided it isn’t worth it to lie. Being grounded more than not grounded isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when you’re in High School! She has other issues but I don’t think being routinely dishonest is necessarily one of them.
Now, our other daughter. This is the girl who we used to always be able to rely on. When her sister was all up in the air about being a cheer leader and hi I’m so cute and oh hi I get what I want ALL the time, this daughter was the solid one. You could count on her to do something you asked her to do, she did more chore activity than her sister and did less socializing for a time than her sister. This one is pushing back and doing a flip flop and it hasn’t been pretty.
Let’s see. Unfortunately there have been so many instances of dishonest behavior I’m going to have to really think about the first time. I think that would be going to a movie with a girl friend and saying boys weren’t involved when in fact she’d gone there to meet a boy we found out later. Then she started having a relationship with one boy, and starting up with the next boy while still being involved with the first. She’d tell the current boyfriend he was just being silly or too controlling or insecure or unnecessarily jealous when in fact, she was talking to another boy the whole time behind his back. Then it was lying to her Dad about whether or not a boy’s parents were home when she was at his house. Got caught, got grounded. Then she told her Mother one day she was running late and was still at school, when her sister saw her getting into some guy’s car. That time she was out for a few hours and was unable to be reached on her cell phone. This was her Mother’s time, supposedly she was caught and grounded but we don’t really know that’s the case. When her sister asked their Mother what had happened, she was told it was none of her business. To us it was clear, the lying was escalating. Then she started wanting to spend time at her Mothers, particularly during the summer months when she was out of school because my husband works from home, her Mother works out of town. We have no doubt that she was hosting boys over there though she denied it. Then there came the time when she told her Dad she was going to a girl’s house but got caught over at a guy’s house. Got grounded for that one. Then we come to the most recent bout, where she comes to me and spins a tale of her current boyfriend who for some unknown reason she just argues with constantly. How can she tell him she’s just unhappy and wants to breakup without starting a big fight. I listened and told her that maybe she could just tell him she thought they needed to step back and take a break for a while. So this is what she did. That afternoon she comes to me as I’m cleaning house and she says to me, do you ever have times when you just want to go clear your head? Yes I said. She said well I want to go on a run and clear my head. I should have known when she said go on a run that she was full of bull, this is our couch potato kid. I told her she had better go tell her Dad. Of course he’s not stupid so he tells her she’d better be back in 20 minutes. She then proceeds to come whine to me that there was no way she could run “her usual route” in 20 min. Usual route? She had a usual route? She went on and on to which I finally said look, you’re wasting time, go and make it work, do what your Dad said. So she left in a huff and she was gone way over 20 minutes. Dad pulls out his phone program and finds her down the street at a park, stationary. Dad takes off and finds daughter dear meeting alone with a boy he doesn’t know. Oh man, all heck broke loose then! I’m dusting blinds, and in she came ran straight up the stairs followed closely by her Dad. Slammed door both times. A loud conversation ensues, husband goes downstairs to the treadmill before he completely blows and she comes down to me. She begins to spin a tale of stopping at the park to tie her shoe, there’s a boy there she doesn’t know, she walked by him told him he had a nice car. Her Dad drove up and jumped to conclusions but she was telling the truth, she didn’t know him and hadn’t gone out to meet him, had just gone for a run. Mind you, this yarn was elaborate in its detail. I was skeptical so I said well you can see how it looks. She admitted it didn’t look good but insisted that she was telling the truth. She goes back upstairs. Apparently her Father had told her she had better think about her story, and when he came back to her room had better be prepared to tell him the truth.
Our other daughter comes down and proceeds to tell me that she has been listening to her sister and it was all untrue. Our daughter did know this guy with the white car, had seen him on numerous occasions. Further of course she’d gone to meet him, that she’d heard her on the phone arranging the whole thing. Well now, really. I wasn’t surprised but I was very disappointed and angry. I didn’t have another chance to see our runner before she went to her Mother’s house but her Dad did tell me that during their talk, she kept changing her story the more pressure he put on her, then when he threatened to take her phone and call this boy’s parents, she finally admitted that she knew him and had in fact gone to the park to meet him that day. Really. I told my husband I intended to let her know upon her return that I didn’t appreciate being lied to straight to my face like that and I would not forget it, nor would I believe any more of her stories.
When she returned, as she usually does when there has been some sort of rift, she acted as if nothing had happened and all was well. I kept my cool and held my tongue, she then started talking to me about a gift idea she had for this guy she liked. I asked her if it was “park boy” and she said it was. I told her what I had to say. I told her among other things that the next time she felt she needed me in her camp, to not bother. She had work to do to regain my trust, that I matter, and her dishonesty wasn’t ok. She said she was sorry, and I said we didn’t need to talk about it anymore.
There have been a couple of other incidents where our daughter has been caught not telling the truth since then, time will tell if this is a passing phase or not.
Lessons learned
- Children lie. It is part of growing up. Heck our 2 1/2 year old, when asked if he did something he knows he’s not supposed to do says NOoooooo while he grins. He knows he’s lying. I did it, you did it too. We’ve all done it. Most of us out grow it, some don’t.
- From my experience, girls are better at the art of deception than boys. I don’t know what it means, if it means anything, they just are. I suspect that perhaps the typical female frame of mind which makes us strive for harmony and to fix relationships when they’re broken may cause us pretty early on to experiment around with more indirect methods of manipulating people or facts to get what we want.
- Maybe sometimes people feel it’s easier to lie than to meet challenges head on, to ask directly for what they want and to reckon with the fact that sometimes we just have to accept the answer no or that this time we’re not going to get what we want. Just a theory but I think in our daughter’s case some of this may be true. She wants her way every time and we’re trying to do our part to show her the world just doesn’t work that way.
- The most effective way I’ve found to deal with our daughter’s pattern of lying is to treat her as a non credible person. When she tells me something I let her know that I hear her but I’ll probably verify whatever it is through another source. When I ask a question and she answers, I look to the other people in the room for the answer I’m going to accept. I can see on her face that she doesn’t like this. Well that’s the consequence of being a non credible person. I’m sure she’ll come around. No one likes to be treated as if they can’t be believed or trusted. Or at least I’m banking on that!
Good Step Mom
Sent from the iPad of Christy Campbell
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音乐播客…
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