Lying in Children: Causes and the Parental Approach

While the broken pieces are still in the child's hand, the parent's first thought is usually: "Why is he lying to me?"

Lying is a behaviour parents read as a moral problem but which rests on a developmental skill. To lie, a child must grasp that the other person knows something different from what they know, hold that information in mind and construct a coherent alternative account. This is not a trivial cognitive operation.

This article covers what lying means at each age, which parental attitudes unknowingly increase it, and when clinical assessment is warranted.

Key Points

• Lying is a developmental skill that emerges with theory of mind; first lies typically appear around the ages of three to four.
• In young children, the blurring of imagination and reality is not lying and should not be treated in the same way.
• The severity of punishment does not reduce lying; it leads to more skilful lying in order to avoid being caught.
• Frequent and unnecessary lying is often a marker of underlying anxiety, attention deficit, learning disorder or a conduct problem.
• The single strongest factor in reducing lying is the child being able to predict what will happen if they tell the truth.

What Does Lying Mean Developmentally?

A child's ability to lie depends on the cognitive capacity known as theory of mind: grasping that another person knows something different from what I know, and that I can alter that knowledge.

For this reason, developmental psychology treats first lies not as a worrying sign but as an expected milestone. Research indicates that children capable of lying perform better on measures of executive function.

This of course does not mean lying should be encouraged. What it means is that it is not the behaviour itself but its frequency, function and persistence that should be assessed.

Distinguishing Imagination from Lying

In children under three, the boundary between imagination and reality has not yet settled. "There was a lion in my room" is not a lie but a product of imagination.

Similarly, young children may recount wishes as though they were real. "My dad bought me a car" may be a way of voicing something they want to happen. Labelling such statements lies and punishing them suppresses the child's self-expression.

The Nature of Lying by Age

Ages 3-4: First lies appear. They are simple, inconsistent and easily disproved. The child generally cannot anticipate consequences.

Ages 5-7: Lies become more coherent. The child can now defend their account but contradicts themselves on detail. The aim of avoiding punishment becomes clear.

Ages 8-11: Lying acquires social functions: fitting in with a peer group, protection from shame, protecting someone else. The concept of the white lie also develops in this period.

Adolescence: The function of lying is mostly to create a space of autonomy. The adolescent withholds or distorts information to avoid supervision and open an area of their own. This is a developmentally expected struggle, but it must be addressed when it extends to matters of safety.

Why Do Children Lie?

Avoiding Punishment

This is the most common reason. If a child anticipates that what follows telling the truth will be worse than what follows lying, they choose the lie. This is a simple calculation of cost; the child does not make it consciously, but their behaviour is shaped by it.

The harsher the punishment, the higher the cost of telling the truth. Severe punishment therefore does not reduce lying; it only makes it better concealed.

Fear of Losing Approval

Some children are avoiding not punishment but the parent's disappointment. In children whose approval is tied to achievement, a poor mark or a mistake is concealed. Here the source of the lie is not fear but anxiety about losing love.

Being Unable to Meet Expectations

Where a family's expectations exceed the child's capacity, the child tries to close the gap with a lie. Saying the homework is done is easier than admitting it could not be done. This picture is particularly common in children with unrecognised learning disorder or attention deficit.

Seeking Social Acceptance

During the school years, exaggerated accounts may be part of an effort to secure a place in the peer group. The child speaks of a possession they do not have or a holiday they did not take. Beneath this there is usually low self-esteem and anxiety about exclusion.

Impulsivity

In children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, lying is less a planned deception than an immediate reaction. The child answers without thinking and is then obliged to defend what they said. These children usually struggle to sustain the lie and are easily caught.

Modelling

Children learn honesty from what they see rather than what they are told. They observe a parent's small lies: saying "I'm not at home" on the phone, promising to take the child somewhere and forgetting. Inconsistency between word and action teaches the child that lying is an acceptable tool. Children read this discrepancy fastest of all; when they see that a rule does not apply to everyone, their commitment to that rule weakens.

The Effect of the Digital Environment

Lies about screen use are the type families encounter most today: saying homework is being done while gaming, understating time spent, opening secret accounts.

What distinguishes this picture is that supervision is technically possible. Yet imposing software restrictions alone achieves nothing but improving the skill of concealment. Setting rules together with the child and establishing ground on which usage can be discussed openly is more durable than technical control.

When Does It Become Concerning?

Lying warrants clinical assessment when it has the following features:

• It has become frequent and almost a mode of communication
• It occurs unnecessarily, without any purpose of gain or avoidance
• It appears alongside stealing, running away, rule-breaking or harming others
• No remorse or shame is observed when the child is caught
• It disrupts friendships and school life
• It has persisted for a long time and does not decrease with age

In this picture lying is not a diagnosis in itself but a symptom of an underlying condition.

Conditions That May Accompany It

• Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: Impulsive answers and efforts to cover gaps created by forgetfulness.
• Specific learning disorder: Concealing academic difficulty.
• Anxiety disorders: Fear of losing approval and of criticism.
• Oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorder: Lying as part of rule-breaking.
• History of trauma: A protective reflex developed in an unsafe environment.

When Lying and Stealing Occur Together

While lying alone is developmental, its appearance alongside stealing indicates a different picture. Taking things without permission at a young age relates to impulse control and may occur until the concept of ownership is established. However, where repeated taking, concealment and absence of remorse coincide during the school years, assessment is warranted.

What must be addressed here is not only the behaviour but what the child needs: an effort to secure a place in the peer group, an unmet need for attention within the family, or difficulty with impulse control.

Collaboration with the School

Teacher observation is valuable in establishing in which setting the lying occurs. Behaviour seen only at home relates to the pattern of expectation and supervision within the household; behaviour persisting in both settings points to a more general difficulty.

Contact with counselling services in schools in Ankara is decisive, particularly for lies told to conceal academic difficulty, because in those cases the real intervention is adjusting learning support.

The Parental Approach: What Should Be Done?

Do Not Ask Trap Questions

Asking a question to which you know the answer — "Did you break the glass?" — invites the child directly into a lie. Instead, state the situation and talk: "The glass is broken. Let's clear it up together, then we will talk about what happened."

This takes the child out of a defensive position and focuses the conversation on the event.

Make Telling the Truth Cheap

It is decisive that the child can predict what will happen if they tell the truth. Softening the consequence of an admission reduces the appeal of lying: "Thank you for telling me the truth. We will still fix the window together, but I am not angry."

Two things are kept separate here: the consequence of the behaviour continues, but honesty is acknowledged separately.

Describe the Behaviour, Not the Identity

"You are a liar" attributes an identity and leads the child to internalise that description. Focus on the behaviour instead: "You told me something that wasn't true, and that damages the trust between us."

Keep Consequences Predictable and Proportionate

What works is consistency, not severity. Applying a harsh sanction to a behaviour one day and ignoring it the next teaches the child that consequences are unpredictable, which increases risk-taking and lying.

Notice Honesty

Parental attention naturally drifts towards the lie, while moments of truthfulness go unnoticed. Naming it when a difficult truth is told — "I know that wasn't easy to say" — reinforces honesty.

Review Your Own Consistency

Small lies told in front of the child, and promises made but not kept, are the most powerful teachers of the behaviour. Not making promises that cannot be kept, and openly discussing it when one cannot be kept, is decisive in terms of modelling.

Particular Situations

Adolescents Withholding Information

Expecting an adolescent to share all information is unrealistic; developing a space of autonomy is a developmental task. The distinction here is this: everyday privacy and matters concerning safety are not the same.

Families should define the safety boundary clearly from the outset: where they are, who they are with, and how they will get home are not negotiable. Loosening supervision in other areas reduces the adolescent's need to conceal.

The Constantly Questioned Child

Lying increases in a child whose every behaviour is questioned and who is expected to account for themselves continually. There is a direct relationship between the intensity of supervision and concealment. In this cycle the family questions more and the child hides more.

Lies Told to Protect a Sibling

Lies children tell to protect a sibling or friend belong to a different category. The motive here is loyalty rather than deception. Acknowledging the child's intention while discussing that sharing the truth is also a responsibility is more useful in these cases.

What to Do at Each Age

In the preschool years, help the child distinguish imagination from reality, but do not punish. "That's a lovely story. Now, what really happened?" preserves imagination while teaching the distinction.

During primary school, make consequences predictable and acknowledge honesty openly. At this stage the child is receptive to learning rules and outcomes.

In adolescence, limit supervision to the safety boundary. Trying to monitor every area increases concealment. Preserving the relationship of trust is more protective than supervision in this period.

When Should You Seek Specialist Support?

In most families lying decreases once parental approach is adjusted, without professional support. Referral to a child and adolescent psychiatrist is recommended in the following situations:

• Lying has become frequent, unnecessary and a mode of communication
• It appears alongside stealing, running away, rule-breaking or aggression
• No remorse or shame is observed when the child is caught
• Friendships and school life have deteriorated
• The child is struggling academically and constantly concealing it
• The family is getting no result from the methods tried, and communication has been reduced to demanding explanations

As Assoc. Prof. Mehtap Eroglu emphasises, the aim in these referrals is not to force the child into honesty but to establish a relational basis on which lying becomes unnecessary.

Expert Opinion

According to Assoc. Prof. Mehtap Eroglu, the most frequent pattern in referrals for lying is families defining the behaviour as a problem of character. That definition leads both to the child seeing themselves that way and to a delay in investigating the real underlying cause.

Clinical experience from consultations in Ankara shows that a significant proportion of children who lie frequently have an unrecognised attention deficit or learning disorder. These children say their homework is done, that they understood the lesson, that they read the book — because admitting they could not is harder for them.

Assoc. Prof. Mehtap Eroglu also emphasises that families trying to obtain results by increasing punishment is the most common mistake. As punishment intensifies, the cost of telling the truth rises and the child learns to lie more skilfully. The real intervention is to lower the cost of telling the truth.

A further observation is that lying often reflects the pattern of communication within the family. In households where conversation takes the form of demanding accounts, the child becomes defensive; where conversation is oriented towards understanding, the need to conceal decreases.

Assessment and Appointment Process in Ankara

Referrals for lying in Ankara rarely arrive as a complaint on their own; they are usually raised under the heading of school performance, screen use or behavioural problems. These referrals mostly involve school-age children and frequently follow an incident at school. The aim of assessment is not to interrogate the child but to understand what need the behaviour is meeting. Families in Ankara often arrive looking for a disciplinary method; yet what emerges from assessment usually points to the gap between the child's capacity and what is expected of them.

At Assoc. Prof. Mehtap Eroglu's practice in Ankara, assessment is conducted from multiple sources. Alongside the history taken from the family, a school observation form is requested; whether the lying occurs only at home or in both settings is diagnostically meaningful. Attention functions, learning skills, anxiety levels and conduct problems are then screened separately. In these assessments, the interview with the child aims not to confirm the behaviour but to understand the child's own perspective.

Families coming to the first appointment in Ankara will speed up the process by noting concrete examples from the past two months: what the lie was about, what preceded it, how the family responded and what followed. This record often makes visible a pattern the family had not noticed; realising that lies cluster around school performance, or occur only in front of one particular parent, clarifies the target of intervention.

If you would like to arrange an assessment for your child's behaviour in Ankara, you can review our child psychiatry service and request an appointment.

In Summary

Lying is a developmental skill expected during childhood and is not in itself a sign of a problem. What matters is not the behaviour but its frequency, its function and whether it appears alongside other behavioural difficulties.

The family's most effective intervention is not to increase punishment but to lower the cost of telling the truth. Avoiding trap questions, keeping consequences predictable and proportionate, acknowledging honesty openly and maintaining one's own consistency all reduce that cost markedly.

Where lying becomes frequent and unnecessary, appears alongside stealing or rule-breaking, and is unaccompanied by remorse, consulting a child and adolescent psychiatrist is recommended.

For the symptoms and treatment approaches of oppositional and defiant behaviour, see our guide to oppositional defiant disorder.