Things are generally somewhere between "really out of hand" and "almost out of hand" in our house .
DS is almost 3.5, and he lies convincingly. This produces a thorny problem, because, as far as I can tell, the effective lying is precocious, so any approach to handling lying is aimed at older kids, and is not really age-appropriate for a 3 yr old. For 3 yr olds, you're just supposed to gently guide them away from whatever it is. But that doesn't work so well when the lying is really _convincing_.
At this point, I would say 80-90% of what he says, for days at a time, is intended to procure a particular result, rather than to mean what it means. Not all of that is lying, but much of it is, hard to say exactly how much. Much of it is also transparent lying ("I'm thirsty, but I don't want cows milk or water or orange juice" "Do you mean you'd like some of my milk?" "yes" "But I just told you no." kinda stuff.) But then he pulls a doozy about something that hurts, or that he ate something he shouldn't have, or whatever and we're half-way to emerg before we clue in he's lying to get out of something. Another favourite involves saying he needs to pee, and doing a very convincing potty dance in order to aquire a trip into a donut shop, be let out of the carseat, delay cleaning up, etc.
He is also willing to back up certain lies with actions. Like the time he ate glass to prove he could. Which was worrysome, because it could have killed him. He seems to have very little regard for his own safety when he's trying to get his way.
So, I guess it's not just the pure lying that's worrying me, it's the intense committment to the ploy.
Help?
-Mich
