Who is right ?

[PoohsHouse]

Dd1 is 6.
Her behaviour at the minute is awful. Examples include being rude , cheeky , rolling her eyes at everything, deliberately ignoring me when I ask her to do something , hitting her younger sister when she can't get her own way etc . Just disrespectful behaviour.

Over the last week she has started to tell lies - silly little things that she really needn't have lied about .

She knows lying is wrong . The first time she lied this week , she said she had brushed her teeth and made up a tale about how she brushed each tooth herself - when in fact , she had washed the toothpaste down the sink .

I told her not to do it again and that was that .

The second lie was a few days later - she had stuck her fingers in to cake icing I had made and ate some . No problems with that , BUT , she came in looking sheepish and I asked her what she had been up to .

She denied anything and insisted she had done absolutely nothing . I let it go as I knew what she had done and it was just minor . I did explain that I wasn't cross about the icing but it's not ok to lie as you get in more trouble .

This morning , she hit her sister (this is currently a problem , not frequent , but we are working to resolve it).

Dd2 came to tell me that her sister had hit her . I asked dd1 and she flat out denied it . I explained one of them must be lying so who is it ? - she flat out denied it , but it was so obvious from her face she was lying .

I gave her a final chance to come clean and she eventually did . I confiscated her screen time for today for hitting and lying and told her again I was cross and it is wrong to lie .

DH now feels sorry for her and thinks we should allow her screen time tonight .

I disagree and think we should follow through .

I have planned some craft type stuff to do instead which I think will give her some positive one on one time , whilst also following through with the consequence .

Who is U ?

To posters who are saying I'm too soft because it's taken three lies to get a consequence ....

I take on board your points , however, as lying is part of her development , rightly or wrongly , I gave her the chance to rectify her behaviour by explaining each time it was wrong - the second time we had an actual chat about it and how lying is wrong .

This to me , gave her a chance to rectify it - she didn't so now she has a consequence .

To me, that is fair and appropriate to her age .

Others may not agree , and that is fine .

Because dd "only" lost screen time at 6 years old for trying her luck with lying (as is normal) , does not mean she's going to grow up to be a lying , attention seeking delinquent .

She actually hit her sister and she's 'only' losing screen time for telling another mouthful of lies.

Will she not be punished for hitting?

For what it is worth , I am a good , honest and caring person . if I do say so myself

I would love for my DC to be like this .

My parents' approach when I lied or messed up , was to smack me with a belt / slipper / hand .

I want to approach this with my DC in an age appropriate way .

I am curious, what do you think causes a child "to grow up to be a lying , attention seeking delinquent"? That is purely me being curious no need to answer.

But things don't happen in a vacuum, children with issues don't appear overnight with no reason.

OK that makes a little more sense, your parents were far too harsh and you're perhaps over adjusting.

worra she was punished for hitting too but it was not relevant to my op because I'm more concerned about the lying at this moment in time .

Dd2 was also punished for hitting her older sister this morning but again, not relevant as she didn't lie about it .

Hmmm. She lied about hitting her sister, then eventually told the truth - and you took away screen time anyway. All you are teaching her is that there's no point in telling the truth (which is a very difficult thing to do at any age, once you've wedded yourself to a lie) - whether she tells the truth or clings to the lie, she'll get punished anyway.

I wouldn't impose or indeed enforce the consequence of no screen time. It's meaningless, not a natural consequence of telling a lie. I don't believe children learn their lesson by being punished. I would actually try and teach her the lesson.

The natural consequence of lying is not being trusted. If this was my son, I would tell him that I can't trust him to walk up the lane and into school on his own any more. This is a new thing (he's 7) and he is very proud of it, of being a big enough boy to be trusted. So it would punish him still, but in a way that makes sense to both of us. Until you have proved that I can take you at your word, we need to go back a few steps. I can't trust you to do and behave as you said you would. I'll be taking you to school again until you've shown me that I can.

And even if the confession that a lie has been told has to be extracted over the course of hours, I would always thank my child for her honesty and leave it at that. She needs to learn that telling the truth doesn't result in bad things, and that telling lies means that people can't trust her any more. That's the lesson here. The 'punishment' is waiting to earn that trust again - like it would be if an adult lied to you, but obviously in an age appropriate way.

This is what I would do. Flame away...

baconyum I am not "over adjusting ". I am happy with my approach .

I think your suggested approach is more suited to an older child . It does not make my approach less worthy .

You seem to be ripping my parenting apart , that's fine , but it does not make your way right .

Ok fair do's.

I still think you're both being far too soft, but you know your kids better than anyone on this thread, obviously.

I think your approach has been fine PoohsHouse - first time - tell her it's wrong, second time - bigger discussion, third time - consequence. OP can now discuss with DD that lying will always now result in a separate punishment in itself.

The DD is being punished for hitting - by losing the ipad on the 45 min drive to get Dad. And punished for lying - by losing it for a further 45 mins on the way home.

Lying is an EXTREMELY IMPORTANT developmental step for children.

baconyum I have no idea what causes that - I'm not a psychologist or of any professional opinion to answer that .

If you are , you don't know my dd , so aren't really in a position to say that my approach would cause that .

Absolutely agree with cauliflower. A black and white approach to lying with young children will come back to bite you when they're clever teenagers!

What on earth is your DH's justification for letting her get away with lying after two warnings?

I would really suggest that she spends at least some of the non-screen time doing chores. If she's helping you with the dishes, for instance, that still gives you an opportunity for some 1:1 interaction.

Parents should support one another when punishments are handed out. If they disagree then that should be discussed in private and not changed by the other parent without this occurring.

Reminds me of a time when I was talking to a male colleague, he said both his children had been informed that while he might be angry if they had done something wrong, he was going to be even angrier if they lied about it first, and the punishment would be greater. Stated they never try to lie their way out of any situation since.