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At what age did your kiddos lie to you? I just realized my DS was lying to me a few weeks ago (20 months old). I would ask him if he pooped and he'd say 'NO' without looking guilty or changing his behavior in the slightest. He does the same thing when I saw him hide something (he didn't notice I was watching) then asked him if he hid those rocks behind the tree (not punishable by any means, just asking to keep interacting with him).
How in the world did he learn this?! He's not in day care and he's not around it much, not enough to pick up on anyway I'd think?!?! What have your experiences been?

Well, I think the "no, I didn't poop" thing is pretty common. They are busy busy busy, and have better things to do than go be changed!

The chapter on children lying in the book Nurture Shock was quite interesting to me.

Don't ask questions you know the answer to. 20 months is too young to lie. They may not tell you the truth but lying implies a whole bunch of moral stuff that they haven't developed.

I agree with puffin. I forget what the progression is, but there is a long period of kids saying things that they are pretending is true, or they wish is true, and it isn't lying in the sense that we usually think of it.

18 months, in the context that you presented.

This is not lying - they don't understand what lying is yet. I guess that he is trying to interact with you just like you are interacting with him about the rocks. As for the poop, my son did not notice that he needed to change if he was very actively playing with other kids (in daycare) - this continued until he was potty trained.
My almost 9 year old still tells me that his stuffed animals talked to him and relays the conversations in great detail. He does not lie, but, he has always liked to pretend play and I go along with it.

I prefer to call this pretend play. The line between fantasy and reality is pretty thin all the way through 6 or 7.

This is interesting to me. While I can agree that at 18 or 20 months a toddler may simply be saying what they wish to be true, I feel children can "lie" with the intention of deceiving someone else before age 6-7. My 3 1/2 year old will say things like, "Mommy said it's ok," (when I did not) or when asked if she has a marker say say and hide it behind her back.

While I'd say it's developmentally normal, I am starting to discuss with her that it's not ok. She can't tell Daddy that Mommy said something was ok when I didn't say that. The look on her face pretty much confirms she knows she was caught red-handed too.

I was short on time when I posted earlier, but that Nurture Shock chapter discussed research into why kids lie showed that between 3-4 years is when kids start typically experimenting with lying. I got a real kick out of the research. There's even a conclusion about lying being a more advanced intellectual skill than truthfulness -- it being a developmental milestone, and kids who start lying at two or three do better on academics. I asked my DD8 about lying this morning and she said it's okay to lie sometimes, like to protect a friend's feelings if they ask you a question like about how their outfit looks. Funny how we teach them white lies without even thinking about it. (I did tell her there ways to comment about an outfit without lying.)

That said, at 20 months, I'm pretty sure the others have covered reasons for denying a diaper need -- like they don't want to stop playing, they might not even be aware, or just in denial themselves.

I just had a flashback to the times my kids did things really young and lied, like drawing on the wall or couch, so as not to get in trouble. Then there's lies about who started a fight.