‘How can I stop my daughter from lying?’

Anna Martin

Lying is a nasty habit.

We’ve all told a white lie whether it be to spare someone’s feelings or just to get out of doing something.

Yet when it becomes an everyday occurrence you have to start drawing a line especially when it comes to your children.

That’s why one parent has turned to Reddit looking for advice on how to stop her daughter from telling fibs.

Explaining the situation she wrote: “My daughter is 11 years old. From a young age (as young as four or five) we noticed she had a habit of “telling tales”. For example, she would tell us that her desk broke while she was drawing on it at school or that a classmate lost his shoes, which turned out to be false.

“Her teachers would mention that she told them we were getting a dog, or that we’d been on a vacation to Italy, or that our neighbour’s tree had fallen into our yard. Silly, harmless, one-off lies. We brought it up with her paediatrician who said it was normal and she would grow out of it.”

Though the concerned mother held out hope that it was just a phase, it seems that things haven’t improved much and she’s concerned her daughter has been telling younger students lies.

“The worst is that she lies about serious things. She has lied about injuries, loved ones dying, experiencing harassment and bullying. She has even claimed we have abused her or she has witnessed us abusing her siblings, or that other people have seriously harmed her.

“None of these stories have any basis in fact and many of them have resulted in investigations by the police and our country’s child protection organisation, and as soon as the authorities get involved she backtracks and says she never did that and the person she was talking to must have been mistaken.”

Though frustrated, the mother and her partner are very involved in trying to help their daughter and have her attending therapy but they want to know if there’s anything else they can do.

Of course, the people of Reddit were more than happy to hop in and offer the poster a bit of advice.

“If her friends are the most important thing to her, then perhaps that’s a good place to start. Helping her to understand that people will be able to tell she is lying sooner or later and this will lead to her losing her friends… perhaps this is already happening and that’s why she is hanging out with little kids instead,” wrote one.

“I agree with the people saying more professional help is probably needed, but I’m gonna suggest something slightly insane. Get her to write and put her stories online, like fanfiction or Wattpad or something,” penned another

“It really helped me stop lying when I was younger because I didn’t really want to lie, I just wanted to tell stories and have someone react to them, or have people tell me my self-insert character was in the right. I wrote a stupid amount of fake Reddit posts too, which isn’t as productive since people don’t know it’s fake.

“Maybe sign her up for a young writers workshop or encourage her to write down the elaborate lies. I wanted a reaction for my stories and no one really cared unless I was my own main character, so let her do that healthily,” the concluded.