Lying. How to deal with it?

[QuintessentialShadows]

My oldest son seems to lie a lot. He has been caught out nearly every day the last week. And that is just at home.

Examples.

"Did you return the film to the library?"
"Yes" lie
One week later, an email from the library telling me the film was late and a fine was due. So again
"Darling, did you not return the film to the library, I had an email saying that a fine is due"
"oh, ok sorry, I will return it today".
later:
"Did you return the film?"
"No, the library was closed" Lie.

ds2 : "muuuuum, my brother bent over my breakfast and coughed on it"
ds1 "I did not, he is lying!" lie

ds2 : "brother threw me on the sofa playing wrestling with me, but I did not like it and told him to stop, but he didnt"
ds1 "you did not tell me to stop"
ds2 "yes I did"
etc. arguing till it transpires that ds1 lied.

ds2 crying on the sofa "mum, you promised me I could watch mickey mouse clubhouse, but brother says there is something wrong with the tv, and we can only watch pokemon". lie

There is stuff like this every day, and I am sick of it.

It is causing such a bad atmosphere, because in many instances his lies are to get HIM out of trouble and his little brother into trouble.
And it would be so easy to tell the truth, and much more benegifical to him such as saying "sorry, I did not mean to cough in your breakfast, it was an accident". Or "I did not hear you say "no", sorry". or "Sorry, I did not change channels, I got carried away by the pokemon episode" etc. I just dont get why he lies. Lying does not come natural to me, and I am very concerned that at the age of 8 LYING is his first option rather than telling the truth.

How do I handle this?

Well, it sounds like he's very afraid of doing something wrong (or at least of being noticed) and it you say that he wants to get his little brother into trouble.
It seems like there are two things then that you could work on. I think the easiest one is maybe the getting the little brother into trouble. There I find the technique good from "Siblings without Rivalry" (Faber and Mazlish) where you basically ask each child for his side of the story and then sum up "Bob says that you threw him on the sofa playing wrestling with him and he told you to stop but you didn't, Tim says that Bob did not tell him to stop and he thought that Bob was play-fighting." then you tell the kids that you are sure they can reach an agreement themselves about what to do and then you leave the room. Like that you refuse to "hand down a judgement" and then it would take all the pressure out of it - there's no point in him lying because HE has to find the solution and he knows what happened...
Regarding him not wanting to do something wrong or at least be noticed doing it, I wonder if it would help to discuss the situation with him. Could you talk to him about how he felt with the book which he didn't take back to the library. Was it that he didn't want to take it back because he didn't want to go to the library because he was busy doing something he liked doing and he couldn't be bothered to take the book back because it was less interesting. Could you then together brainstorm about solutions to the problem? If you explain to him that if he doesn't take the book back, there will be a fine - money which you could otherwise spend on something nicer - so what could he do to make sure he takes the book back in time. Again I think Faber and Mazlish are good on this (How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk).
Maybe it would also be possible to find some story about when someone owned up to something they did (took responsibility for it) and by doing that, they did something good. I can't think of a famous one off the top of my head: maybe along the lines of child was playing with parents car keys and hid them in their bedroom, then pet dog got hit by a car (depending on the age of your son, obviously - otherwise hurt it's paw) and had to be taken to the vet, but they couldn't find the car keys, child said he didn't know where the car keys were and so everyone hunted for the car keys while the dog was more and more poorly, then finally the child admitted that he had taken the keys and went and fetched the keys. The parents were really pleased that he had been honest and they could quickly get the dog to the vet, just in time. The dog was also very grateful that by owning up and being honest, the child had saved his life.
Sorry, that's just off the top of my head and so really awful but I'm sure there are books with that kind of thing in them. I think they often crop up in teeny soap operas too!
You could then talk about how each character in the story felt - with all the emphasis on how brave it was to own up - not on how naughty it was to lie in the first place...

We do all the above - getting the kids to negotiate and explaining consequences. They work reasonably well. The other thing we do is explain that there is a penalty for an offence (ie hitting your brother), however if I determine that there has been hitting and lying there is an additional penalty. There is once chance to own up/settle the dispute and escape the additional santion. The sanction for lying is worse than the one for the original offence so I usually get the truth!

It might also be worth finding out if there is any underlying problem (when you are calm).

For instance my DS has been awful since a school trip. Eventually (not calmly I'm sorry to say) it came out that he had been bullied by some of the others on the trip. Kids may lash out because they are unhappy. Then they lie (in a stupid way sometimes) because they are scared of what will happen. This is often all stupid, I have had a child in tears over something which she lied about but it was obvious she had done (no one else in the room) and I would have just given a very mild reprimand to, or asked her to mop it up.

How old is your DS? Could any of it be hormone related?

Lots of good ideas here. Thanks. I shall reread and think how we can tailor some of this to fit us.

He is 8 (9 in april). He has had the chance to come clean with things. He has even been asked calmly when we are one to one if he is telling the truth, and if he isnt, it is much better to confess now, rather than let the lie escalate. (The way it did when he said he had solved the rubriks cube in one day without cheating, and it turned out he had taken all the stickers off and replaced them. He insisted he had really solved it, and no he had not undone the stickers. When we then caught him doing it AGAIN, it was of course a lot worse, as he had been prepared to trick us a second time and pretend he had done it again)

With the rubix cube (as well as the other stuff) it really sounds like he feels he has to prove himself all the time - he has to be right, he has to be clever, he has to be perfect. I don't know really how you work on children who think they have to be perfect (at any cost - such as lying). Could you talk about ways in which you're not perfect and how that's ok???

That is very perceptive of you Piccadilly. He is very competitive, and he has to be best. He loses interest quickly, if he cannot be really good at something really quickly!

It is a shame it does not translate to doing his homework. (Though as it is only reading as he is so far ahead in everything else, he figures he does not need to do it, as he read so many books anyway......

What can work with perfectionist children (I was one, they run in my family) to stop putting any value on achievement and value internal qualities instead. It sounds counter intuitive that when he comes home from school with a good mark you just say "oh right". Or that you praise someone for being kind and having thier heart in the right place, even though what they have just done is stupid (me feeding dog Mars Bars aged 9ish when I should've remembered chocolate was poisonous to dogs was the example I had in mind). When you draw together you say "I like spending time with you" not "I like your drawing". It's hard to do but if you shift the focus from doing things right to being yourself then you may have cracked it.

The consequences of lying approach never worked for me as a kid because I didn't lie for advantage. I lied because I was scared of being seen as less than excellent. I also avoided my homework for the same reason (it was a chance to fail, and that was unbearable). When there were made to be consequences of lying I just had even more to be anxious about, so the lies got more elaborate. I thrived when no one appeared to care or even notice if I was clever, or pretty, or the best.

I think your son sounds like a very bright boy OP and has probably got used to a lot of praise and is scared he might not keep meeting expectations. So that's why I think showing no acheivement expectations at all could work.

How old is ds? My ds is 6 and we have similar. The last time he got caught out he was ADAMANT he wasn't lying and he was. I took his dsi off him for a week (this hurt him) and tbh since then he has been as good as gold, but last few days little ones creeping in. I have warned him the ds will go again if the lying starts up again.

A lot of kids lie. Kids are smart, they lie, it gets them out of trouble, it gets them attention etc. However, my brother even now at 34 tells lies about things he need not lie about. He didn't grow out of it. I don't want my ds to be like that, so I come down hard on lying.

I really agree with Underachieving - and I too want to follow the advice (I know I should but as Underachieving says, it´s not so easy when you´re not used to it) of recognising internal qualities but not praising achievement. I think too that avoiding praise would make a big difference. I´ve read several books on this: Richard Weissbourd´s "The parents we mean to be" and of course Alfie Kohn "Unconditional Parenting".