11yr old and "minor" lying issues

[Dotty342kids]

Have DS who started secondary school this term. He's always been a very "vague" kind of personality so it can be hard to pin him down to specific answers about things.
However, recently I've noticed more and more (relatively minor) incidences of lying to my face. Examples: he and a new school friend got home before me last week. DS told me they'd had some squash to drink. Noticed in dishwasher that glasses had clearly had diet coke in them. Not a problem for him to have odd soft drink so no real need to lie.
In the mornings before he goes to school he often switches laptop on to clear memory stick of stuff for the day ahead / check what needs printing off. But it's become clear (and actually caught him at it this morning) that he's on Minecraft. Again, not a major problem but he blatantly lied about it this morning, and probably other mornings too.
I hadn't seen his glasses for a few days, kept asking him and he kept saying they were in his room / school bag. This morning it finally becomes clear that they went missing last week at some point. So again, he obviously knew they'd gone awol, but fibbed that he did know where they were.

Each instance isn't a biggie at all, but it's the lying to me that really grates. I don't want to punish him for the actual misdemeanours, as they aren't terrible, but I do want to punish the lying.
How do I do this without making him feel like he needs to be even more elusive?

Before you get to punishments (yes, I know, I find it hard to hold off too), can you sit him down and show him that you know he's lying to you and that you're worried because he thinks he needs to. At least, I'd be worried about that - like you say, none of these things (except maybe the glasses, as they probably need ordering) is important, so not worth having a war over. The problem is the lack of communication and punishing him for that isn't going to improve matters (I can see you get that, so apologies for stating the obvious). How would he feel if you kept lying to him in the same way?

If he likes life a bit vague, then he'll probably find being caught in the spotlight long enough to do this enough punishment anyway! Otherwise you will have to treat him like a baby a bit - eg download the stick for him, don't let him do it, so he loses Minecraft time. And how is he sleeping?

Thanks everhopeful, you're right in that I really don't want to do down the route of punishments without understanding what's going on. The trouble is that he struggles a bit with communicating directly at the best of times (he has some mild learning difficulties) so any direct questioning or pinning him down and asking for explanations is something he finds really difficult and generally only makes him more evasive. He's always struggled to explain why he does the (sometimes stupid!) things he does.....

I think a chat about how he'd feel if I lied to him and explaining that I'm worried he feels the need to might be a way forward. I'll try it later, thank you.

And he's sleeping fine as far as I know, why do you ask?

My experience with DD is that she quite often will start to do Weird Stuff if short of sleep, that's all. We have regular issues on that front anyway driving me nuts!