We know when you lie!

When my son John was telling a fib, the poor child didn’t even believe his own lie. He wiggled and squirmed and sometimes beads of sweat would form on his brow. Subsequently he was never close to convincing. He felt so guilty about his lie, I almost felt sorry for him. Then he felt disappointment in the fact that he was so bad at lying. Most of the time John would come clean before I got to say a word. I just let him go on and on and dig a deeper and deeper hole to fall into.

My daughter on the other hand was masterful at telling a story. However she always added information to justify her lie. “Everyone says so. Everyone's doing it.  Everyone knows this.’ She desperately worked to convince me. That's when I knew it was a lie. Quickly, I let her know; I didn’t care who says so, who does it or who knows it. This totally upset her. Carefully, I questioned her. With each question, the truth became clearer and the lie became weak and began to unravel. A good mom or dad can do that without much effort. Any good parent knows when their child is lying.

Lying is a perfectly normal child behavior problem. Kids lie about doing their homework, about getting chores done, about weather or not they ate the rest of the Oreos. Of course it's the parents job to address it, and teach the child that lying is not a good idea. Children lying is not a character flaw, and it’s not an issue of morality. It's just an immature and ineffective way to choose to solve problems. Rather than fix a situation, a child lies about it. Most kids learn and don't lie so much as an adult. Most people can be trusted to be relatively honest.

Clearly some of our elected officials still think lying is a good way around a problem. Those who habitually lie do have a character flaw and it is an issue or morality. Our government officials need their parents to question everything they tell us. Wouldn’t that be great. Everyone knows that.. wouldn’t cut it anymore. It’s a well known fact…would be a mute point. The politicians mom would say, “I don’t care, just give me the facts! And quit your squirming!” I wonder how some of these people can sleep at night knowing that their mom and dad can hear them lying to the public every day, like they do. I wonder how they justify the things they say to the mom who always knows when they are lying.

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Yvonne Conte is a nationally recognized Corporate Culture Expert, Motivational keynote speaker and author helping fortune 500 companies create positive corporate climates where laughter and humor is encouraged and productivity soars. www.YvonneConte.com  or call 315.727.8668