Dr. Cathryn, a pediatrician with 32 years of experience, explains that lying in toddlers is developmentally normal and can signal emerging cognitive skills. She distinguishes between imaginative lies and avoidance-driven ones, then offers strategies: treat it as a skill deficit, narrate events instead of interrogating, ask solution-focused questions, and praise truth-telling.
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Welcome to the Toddlers Made Easy podcast, where you learn how to become the parent every kid wants. I'm Dr. Catherine, a pediatrician with more than 32 years of experience and the mom of four amazing kids. I know you're crazy busy, so let's dive right in. Today we're going to be talking about lying. Now, there's a fuzzy line between reality and wishful thinking when it comes to toddlers and preschoolers. Sometimes they want something so badly they actually believe in it. For instance, when Lily asks her four year old son why he came home from a playdate with a toy that didn't belong to him, Tom said, leo said I could borrow it. Well, imagine the mom's embarrassment when she returned the toy the next day and discovered that Leo had been looking for it all morning. If you're a parent of a toddler, chances are you've been on the receiving end of a few white lies. Whether it's I didn't eat the last cookie or I didn't make that mess. Toddlers have a knack for stretching the truth. But before you start worrying that your toddler is going to become a pathological liar, take heart. Lying is a perfectly normal developmental behavior for a toddler. I remember my daughter telling her kindergarten teacher she had a twin sister, which was news to me. Now, there are different kind of lies that occur for different reasons. Younger kids lie to see what will happen, plus they have fantastic imaginations. And sometimes that line between reality and fantasy, well, it just isn't clear. And here's something that's really interesting. It's thought that kids as young as two year olds lie. And at this age, lying is actually considered a sign of advanced cognitive skills. So according to research, if your two year old lies, you should actually celebrate. And by the way, the reason for that is, is that lying is a complex skill. But here's the we want our kids to be intelligent enough to lie, but not morally inclined to do so. So take heart. Early lying, it isn't a reflection of moral weakness and it's entirely developmentally normal. 3 year old Sam told his aunt that he had a sleepover last night. He didn't. Three and a half year old Jill told her mom that she didn't eat all the cookies on the plate. Meanwhile, she's covered in cookie crumbs. So lying isn't necessarily a sign of bad character in toddlers. And in fact, it's quite the opposite. It's often just a sign that your child's got an active imagination. They'll experiment with bending the truth in fun and harmless ways. Toddlers make up stories about their day, or they tell tall tales about things that happen to them. But in their minds, these stories are real, even if they're not based in. Toddlers also lie out of necessity. If your child has done something and he knows he shouldn't have, let's say he scribbled on the walls, well, he may lie to avoid getting in trouble. Now, when a young toddler, let's say a two to three year old, lies. Remember, a toddler's brain is still very immature and they act without thinking about consequences. They're very impulsive. They're also just starting to get the difference between reality and fantasy. Toddlers will lie when they can tell you're upset and they just want to make everything okay. At this age, kids, they really don't understand that telling lies is wrong. Now, as kids get a little older, let's say those three to four year olds, these guys are a little more savvy, but they really are still exploring and testing. But because they now have more sophisticated speech skills, you can have bigger conversations about making good choices. Now, I know hearing your toddler tell tall tales can be confusing, not to mention frustrating. Because after all, lying is considered wrong and it is wrong. So how do you deal with it so it becomes less over time. Let's take a little deeper. Dive into that. The first thing is to consider lying as lack of skills, not misbehavior. Studies have shown that promoting the benefits of honesty is far more effective than punishing dishonesty. So avoid putting your toddler on the spot with comments like, did you do this? Instead, narrate the situation. Hmm, it looks like you found the crayons and drew on the wall. That does look fun. But it's not okay to draw on the walls. I'll give you some paper that you can draw on after we clean this up. Come and help me. Or if your toddler tells you he didn't do something, don't try to prove him wrong. Focus on building skills instead of punishing him for lying. For instance, let's say your toddler says, superman undid the toilet paper roll. Instead of saying, that's ridiculous, you did that. Say, can you please tell Superman that the toilet paper needs to stay on the roll? This teaches your toddler that they don't need to fear telling the truth. Remember earlier I mentioned that it's important to focus on promoting honesty rather than punishing lying. Well, let's look at this in really practical terms. How do you do this, the first thing is to think about how you respond to unwanted toddler behaviors. If your child tends to get in big trouble when they mess up, they'll be more inclined to tell a little white lie to avoid upsetting you. Now, that doesn't mean you let your child do whatever he wants. We still have to teach our kids right from wrong, but we need to do it in ways that are calm and cool and confident instead of punitive. And this is a big, big topic, and we're going to talk more about it on future episodes. The next point is don't set your kids up. For instance, if the TV room is a complete mess, instead of asking, who did this? Say this room is a mess. How can we fix this up? Or if your kids are old enough, I'd take it one step further and say, what can we do next time to avoid this mess? And you see, again, here we're focusing on the solutions instead of the problems, and kids are more comfortable fessing up with this approach. Next, we need to appreciate honesty. If your child came to you because she spilt her milk, take a deep breath and calm yourself down. And I know it's not easy to do, but you can do it because moms do hard things, then say, thank you for telling mommy what happened. I know that's really hard to do. The next point is really important and one we often don't give enough attention to, and that is be a good example. Kids are always watching. How we handle situations teaches a powerful lesson. So watch out for those little white lies that tend to creep up and go unnoticed. We don't want to give our kids the impression that lying is an acceptable way to overcome problems. And the last point is to give do oversight. When we consider mistakes a learning opportunity, we allow our kids to be human and they'll be more likely to admit their mistakes in the future. So you can say something like, what could you do differently next time? Again, you see how that focuses on solutions instead of punishing for dishonesty. Lying is such a big topic and it causes so much worry that we'll definitely talk about this again in future episodes. I hope you found this episode helpful. I've created a guide that you can download and the link is in the show notes. And it's all about how to encourage honesty. It never hurts to have a cheat sheet, especially when you're revved up. And that's what lying does to us. We get worked up. So have a great week and we'll talk again soon.
