Short excerpt from a YouTube video by Dr. Tracy Dalgleish explaining that children's lying is purposeful communication of unmet needs rather than accidental misbehavior. The speaker links lying to executive-function overload and task overwhelm—especially during the "bookends" of the day (getting ready for school and bedtime)—and advocates curiosity and understanding over punishment.
Lying shows up and is super sticky. What's the deal with lying? Yeah, all behavior is communication of a need, right? And so lying doesn't happen on accident. It happens for a reason. And I'm so much more interested in getting curious about like, why is this happening than just punishing them for the lie. Punishing them for the lie is so temporary. Executive function is something that requires a lot of energy and capacity to be able to like go through the tasks to get out the door to get to bed. And what we know is those bookends of the day, the getting out the door for school or whatever and then getting into bed are two parts of the day that have a ton of tasks. And so when their brain feels overwhelmed from the tasks, they might lie about like, yeah, I brushed my teeth because really they're just saying like, I don't have the energy to go through all these tasks.
