Nipping "fibbing" in the bud

[LaraW]

My almost 5 year old has been "fibbing" a lot recently to avoid getting in trouble for various things. He makes up stories about how something happened, whether or not he did something, etc.

We have told him that its important to always tell the truth, and that he will get in trouble for the thing he did PLUS not telling the truth. We need to nip this in the bud.

I am not sure how to do this. My older one has never really done this, so this is new territory. I know this is normal behavior, etc but I do want to address it.

Thoughts?

[leebee]

I found that this stage was more about rewriting history to play out how they WISH it happened--in other words, to show that they did not do something wrong. Both of mine went through this, but my older one moreso. He so very much wanted to have NOT disappointed us, he would come up with elaborate stories to cover. We had to really work to come to a point where he knew he could tell the truth without fearing punishment--we made it clear that we could deal with what he did rationally, but the 'lying' was an issue. We had to work a long, long time to get him to realize it was in fact lying. But we got through it. And he rarely even stretches the truth now.

[PurplePotato]

Mine has just started this as well. We have also talked about how he'll be in trouble for the lying, not for telling me what happened. I think it is going to be a loooooong process. :rolleyes: