how do you 'punish' older children?

[hollybet]

ds1 is 11 and is a persistent liar and I am at the end of my tether with him. It is affecting his school work and all our lives. As an example - he has a homework diary, in which he is supposed to write his homework everyday. There was never anything written in this as "the english teacher's football team won yesterday and so we didn't get any homework", "the french teacher has been off school for 6 weeks, so we haven't had any French. Obviously this didn't last long and he now has to see his head of house every night and she goes through it with him. So last night, he had history homework written in by the teacher herself - "Do questions one to eight on work sheet" Ds1 said that he had written this himself and he had written it wrong, so he only had to do to question 6. The writing was totally different and we had a sample of hers and one of his, but he was insistent about this - he got to screaming about it!!
He liesa bout having a wash in the morning, says he has had one when he still has breakfast round his face, lies about stupid little things all the time.

Our 'solution' to this was deprivation of 'treats', so he would hve no tv/playstation for a week, we wouldn't take him to his football matches and the latest one is that he can't catch the bus to and from school with his frends, either dp or I gives him a lift.

but none of this is working and how far can you carry it? We could end up banning him from the tv until he is 19 at thsi rate?

any other suggestions as we are really at desperation point with this? Waiting for someone to call me back from school soI can go in and see them, but that won't solve the problems at home.

Hollybet - the Introductory Health Warning is that I have no experience whatsoever of parenting 11 year-olds, but I was a persistent and prodigious liar aged 11.
I did it partly for the sake of it, becaue i could, because I had a very active imagination, and it seemed more interesting, somehow, no to tell the truth, even about mundane and little things. But it also gave me a secret feeling of power, and as if I was in charge of a world I had created. At the time I was a happy, stable child with everything going for me, BUT I was the oldest of 3 and Mum had been pre-occupied for 3 years with a hyperactive baby/toddler which undermined family life and made me feel I had to be grown up beyond my years. I was also the very youngest in class at school, and often felt anxious about 'keeping up' or that I was 'babyish'. I was also at a school where most people came from noticabley more well off families than mine, and I often embellished or mis-represented in order to make my life more glamourous - or tragically dramatic! These were all subtle factors - I felt happy on the whole, and there were no serious problems.

Since sanctions are not working, and as you say, could escalate fruitlessly, would it be worth having a very gentle chat with him? What finally stopped me (mostly!) was realising that I had put Mum in a position of shame and embarrassment, and I felt sorry and ashamed.

Good luck.

Unfortunately you might not be able to much more than ride this out. DD1 was like this. We even got to the point where we would set 'traps' of some sort to see if she was as bad as we thought or if we were going potty. We tried;
being nice - didn't work
being horrible - didn't work
groundings & other punishments - didn't work
ignoring bad behaviour - didn't work
focusing on good behaviour - didn't work
talking to her - didn't work
shouting - didn't work
Quite literally, whatever we tried - didn't work

All I can say is that it took a long time before she grew out of it and she's now a fantastic 24 year old. Sorry - not consolation at the moment. It may be frustrating and annoying, but sometimes all you can do is wait.

I think we've tried pretty much all of those too (I'm hollybets dp for those that dont know!).

The most frustrating thing is that he is so adamant about the lies that he very rarely backs down - even in the face of the most overwhelming evidence.

I've been trying to stress to him that because of the lies, it is getting almost impossible for us to believe anything he tells us - even the very important things. I hoped that might get through to him but it doesn't seem to have worked.

I know things could be much worse - its not like he's stealing from us etc then lying about it - its just so frustrating that we have to check everything he tells us. And the times when we do believe him (because we really really want to be able to) and treat him in some way, tend to result in us finding out afterwards that he lied all through anyway.

Blu - I did try with the homework lies saying that it was embarrassing us, but he didn't seem in the least bit concerned about that.

He is such a lovely boy when he lets his 'lying' guard drop. We just want that side of him more of the time!

I know exactly what you're saying, DD was generally such a lovely person when she wanted to be - that's the annoying thing. We could actually witness her doing something and she would still stand and swear until she was blue in the face that it wasn't her.

On the bright side - she's great now and during some of our more girlie natter moments, she admit that she doesn't know how or why we put up with her. Yet she can't say why she did it - just that she couldn't stop herself from lying. No matter what we said or did, there was no way that she was going to admit to something after she had already lied about it.

I'm convinced that its just a phase, a way of testing parents out and a matter of nthem not wanting to loose face ... hopefully he'll come out of it soon. But until then {{{{{{{{{{hugs}}}}}}}}}}.

Thank you. DP has spoken to school today and their suggestion is to effectively write off this term (1st term at high school), and call the new term a 'brand new start', without the lying of course!

Let's just pray it works.

He's been better tonight so far (apart from accidentally getting rubber marks from new shoes all over our dining room floor, but bless him he's helped me clean it all off to surprise his mum when she gets in from football training with ds2 shortly) :)

I have no experience of 11 year olds, only know that I didn't turn into my mothers worst nightmare until I was 13 (I was attempting to give Amanda de Cadnet a run for the money...ahem..) but do you think he doesn't like his new school (I'm assuming its new, as you intimate this in post below?) did his friends move up to the same school as him? just a thought?

So persitant lies are something I might encounter as my 10 yer old gets older. Must file this away in my memory.

No advice based on experience of an 11 year old. My younger son (aged 5) likes a good lie and we do have a way of dealing with school-based lies at least. We tell him we have the teachers phone number, so why don't we just phone them up etc etc. Knowing we can and will check the facts will make my yonger son back down. Would this work for an 11 year old - I don't know.

For the homework lies, can you somehow have a more direct line to the teachers? perhaps they could leave a photocopy of his true homework list with the school office so you can phone in and check? or would the teachers give you their phone numbers so you can ask them direct? I know it's a lot to ask of a teacher, but I assume they too want your son to end this habit. If your son knows you can and will check, then there's no point in lying (is there? I say hopefully). So you shouldn't have to be phoning the teachers much anyway - just a few times to begin with, so that your son realises he's sussed.

For the other, non school lies, what happens when you call his bluff?