When one of your kids is lying

In My Humble Opinion
61

Hmm. Let’s imagine you are a judge. Let’s imagine that brought before you are three children. They are accused of vandalizing a building. There is one set of footprints leading to and exiting from the building, and each of these children were rounded up with muddy shoes of the same size and type. All of them had the opportunity, and there’s no evidence that points to any particular one. No one will confess.

What does the judge do? Declares all three guilty and gives them each 90 days in jail! The guilty one has been punished (presumably); the innocence of the other two is a mere technicality.

Make no mistake, your kids will see it this way. And if they weren’t passive-aggressive before, you’ve given them reason to be. I can understand the concern about lying, but that reaction seems to be the wrong one.

Damn straight. There doesn’t even have to be hitting–merely the heavy overtone of anger and wrath from those who purportedly love you is potentially enough to create lasting damage in certain psyches. It makes one think of the abused dog cowering in the corner, flinching from the hand that might touch it.

62

Well, just for the record, (and a compulsive braider :D, even now in my thirties), if I knew that my parents were going to ‘read me the riot act’ and CANCEL ENTIRE FAMILY VACATIONS because I braided the fringe on a blanket…you can bet your life I’d never come to them with ANY THING else in the future.

One of the reasons I felt comfortable telling my parents scary or wrong things that happened to me and my friends was because I knew they wouldn’t go bonkers.

63

Torture the three of them until the guilty one confesses. Then torture them all some more just for kicks. That’ll teach them viets!

Now where the hell is air support?

64

Nervous habit?

I fidget.
I will shred things, reassemble them, twist things, untwist them, braid them, weave them, unweave them, pick at them without even noticing that I’m doing it. Really, later on I would look at the shag carpeting that has been twisted into tiny spikes and know I was sitting there, so it must have been me who did the twisting. The blanket thing sounds exactly like something I might do. I’m not sure it (in itself) is enough to require getting help - but since there are other issues, it might be.

For me, it isn’t deliberate and it isn’t conciously passive agressive (perhaps unconciously) but … I don’t know.

If you do find out that one was responsible, perhaps making them replace the damaged blanket? And then allowing that child to use only the damaged blanket?

65

I am not a child pyschologist. I am a parent, but haven’t experienced the teenage years, so feel free to take this with a grain of salt.

To make my point, allow me to quote from previous posts in the thread:

While I would also be very cautious to rule out natural causes to the braiding, if you are able to do so, here is what I see happening -

Your youngest may have braided the fringe as a fiddling habit while watching TV. Unless you had previously made it clear to the kids, I would guess she would have thought this to be a harmless and innocent activity (and reversible, despite some effort).

When the riot act was read, she was justifiably concerned for getting punished for doing something she did that she didn’t know was wrong. Cancelling the ski trip showed that this was a REALLY BIG DEAL.

Now combine that with a need for social interaction - attention. While I am sure she would prefer positive attention, perhaps the negative attention fills this void. Hence, the repeat behavior.

While I am not a pyschologist, I have studied psychology, and have some knowledge in the area. I am aware of the field of transactional analysis. This field spends some time analyzing interactions between people.

One postulate is that all people can fill the role of Parent, Child, and Adult. And that the role you choose to initiate interaction often determines the role the other person will use to respond. That is, if you act like a Parent toward your Child, they will respond as a Child.

Your kids are approaching adulthood. If you want them to act like adults, you need to treat them as adults.

And I ask you: If they were adult guests in your house, how would you have treated them differently?

One other thought - when other posters have suggested that you not make a big deal out of it, I doubt they were diminishing the seriousness of the issue. Transactional analysis would even suggest that to break the negative cycle, you sometimes need to purposefully shift roles. That is to say, if your youngest is yearning for attention, and will even settle for negative attention, giving her lots of negative attention isn’t the answer (Duh, right?). In this sense, giving your youngest plenty of positive attention (without any known connections to this issue) and reducing these offenses from a felony to a pardon makes a great deal of sense.

I doubt your child has a serious problem that requires counseling. But continue on the track you are on, and I am confident she will.

To reiterate my original disclaimer - I could be completely talking out of my ass. Consider what I have written at your own risk.

66

If Dinsdale told his family that the trip was cancelled because he could not afford the trip, would that be alright? If he said that the trip was cancelled because he and his wife were emotionally distraught, would that be alright? I mean, who the hell is paying for the trip anyway? Since when do kids have the right to a skiing trip, if their parents decide not to go? Maybe they should just send the kids even if they no longer want to go, so it doesn’t cause the kids too much mental anguish.

67

This is what I’m thinking. The kids are probably waaaay too scared.

Dinsdale, no one is telling you that you have to put up with “unpleasantness”, I think they’re saying-priorities. Choose your battles.

Blanket fringes aren’t a big priority.

I think you and your wife have some SERIOUS control issues.

:dubious:

68

And you also mention that she doesn’t talk about incidents at school/wherever.

Some kids are just like that. They don’t necessarily know how to act to get people to like them, and whatever they try seems to come out badly. Rehearsals and conversations about what might work sometimes help, or sometimes not.

I was a kid who didn’t like to talk about feelings, or tell my parents (or anyone) about stuff that happened. I’m not quite sure why now–maybe a combination of not wanting to worry them, not wanting to talk about how I felt or admit that I was having a rough time, and not realizing that there might be something to be done about the situation or a way to make things better next time. Kids are often kind of fatalistic, I think; whatever happens is just there to be lived with and it doesn’t occur to them to try to change it or say anything about it. Anyway I still don’t like to talk about my feelings; I’m just a private person, I guess. Maybe your daughter is, too.

Either way, I don’t think that the blanket fringes are something to get deeply upset about or see as a symptom of huge problems. (Mine knot up all the time, btw, but it wouldn’t occur to me to tell the store about it.)

69

When I was a child, my mother was very much into knitting and would leave her knitting basket near the TV. I, being another very fidgety person, one day decided to play with the yarn. I figured it was harmless. I didn’t pull out any of her work or damage anything, I just rearranged the balls of yarn. Apparently, my mother wanted her yarn piled just so–and that wasn’t the way I had piled it.

Like you, my parents read me the riot act. Oh boy, did they read me the riot act. And I was pissed–because I thought they’d gone crazy over an insignificant thing. It’s not as if I’d meant any harm.

So, the next day, I really messed up that knitting basket.

Yes, I was angry at my parents which is why I did it. But it wasn’t from some seething maladjusted rage. It was normal teenage “you can’t do that to me” crap. Yes, it was bad, and I got in trouble for it (as I should have–I intentionally did something wrogn). But it didn’t mean there was something wrong with my psyche. I was just a teenager being a brat. It happens.

I would guess that one of your kids was probably ticked that you’d read them the riot act over the blankets and decided to tick you off again. But I don’t know if that means there’s major problems.

Of course, I still braid blanket fringe–so maybe I am maladjusted!

70

I’m 15, and when I was a little younger and clumsier, I used to drop things on our carpets ALL of the time. Spaghetti, juice, soda… you name it, I dropped it. My mom used to freak out and yell at me over it, and I reacted the same way as Q.N, “Its just carpet, why are you yelling at me?” It definitely made me feel like she thought the carpet was more important than me.

You have to consider that whoever is braiding the fringes on the blankets isn’t doing it to spite you, and you’re making the situation worse by making a big deal out of it.

71

From what you’ve said, Dinsdale, I think I can maybe identify with your youngest a bit. I have a habit of fiddling with anything I can get, especially while watching TV, reading, or at the computer. I’m also absent-minded - I’ll do things that I’ve been specifically told not to do, not because I’m trying to be rebellious, but because it seemed like a good idea at the time and I didn’t remember that I wasn’t supposed to. (Case in point: my aunt and uncle on my dad’s side were coming to visit, and he repainted the banister-thingie that seperated a little decorative ledge from the steps. I was warned not to touch. Go upstairs to play on the computer to pass the time, come downstairs for dinner excited about having guests over… and run my hand along the freshly painted banister-rail thingie. :smack: I wasn’t trying to make the dad angry - in fact, I was pretty much scared of having him angry at me. I just kinda forgot.) So, braiding/weaving the fringe of a blanket while watching TV, even after being told not to, sounds a lot like something I would do. It may be that your daughter isn’t realizing what she’s doing when she’s doing it, and what you see as passive-agressiveness (or willful defiance, as my dad was fond of calling it), is just absent-mindedness. Seeing that you were so upset about it, she didn’t want to confess and get into trouble, so she lied.

I would recommend giving her yarn or something to fiddle with as she watches TV, and/or removing the temptation, i.e. the blanket, from the TV area.

As for counciling - I had plenty of that growing up, due to family dynamics and my mom being concerned that I didn’t have any friends, and this that and the other. While obviously every situation is different, in my case I just got exasperated at all these (in my mind, clueless) people poking around in my life. I would suggest asking her how she’s doing in school, socially, etc, and let her know that if she has any problems she can talk to you or her mom about them.

As for the ski trip - perhaps the rescheduling thereof could be a reward after the guilty party confesses? It seems it was a bit of an overreaction; however, IMHO it isn’t good to take back/back out on punishments, because then when your kids have really screwed up, and are deserving of their punishment, they feel that it’s unfair that you won’t take this one back like you have all the others. That’s been my personal experience, from the side of the child, anyways.

72

Confession time

As a child, to get back at my mother for anything at all, I would add water to her shampoo. Often, I was getting back at her for telling me to have a shower when I wanted to be watching TV. It got to the point where I’d mix water in with her shampoo every night out of habit. It was a stupid pointless thing to do, and I can’t explain why I started it (I think perhaps I was told off one night for using way too much shampoo and was told it was too expensive to waste), but it served the purpose of annoying her without putting me in the line of fire.

The moral? Children do stupid things with very little provocation. The second round may have simply been “revenge” on you for telling them off the first time.

73

To me it seems the issue here isn’t that somebody (may have) braided the blanket, but that after everyone being told that this was somethign that was not acceptable, the event occured a second time.

There are a couple of thoughts I have here.

  1. although highly unlikely, perhaps one of your children suffers from a sleep disorder that falls into the Parasomnia category - it IS possible that someone can perform even complex tasks while they are still asleep - totally unaware of what they are doing. This isn’t unsual in children. And this would explain nobody owning up to the “crime” - if nobody actually knew they did it. You could set up a camera to test for this, or rig some kind of alarm that would go off should one of the members of your household leave their room during the night - or perhaps just removing the blankets at night to see if that stopped the event from occuring might even help work it out.

now i’ve forgotten the other thing i was going to say!

oh - could have just been the suggestion that steam may help unfrizzle the fridge of the blanket

74

I sincerely doubt that the kid who braided the fringes did it the first time to make you mad. But the second time… maybe.

I think you should only blow up at your kids if they do something that malicious or dangerous. There’s a negative consequence to blowing up and you should only use it if the offense is worth it. If they do something “bad” out of curiosity or absent mindedness, yelling at them is not appropriate. You can still show them that there are consequences to their actions, like helping to clean up the mess on the carpet if they spill something, but don’t go ape-sh*t over something that the kid wasn’t trying to be mean about.

Can you imagine if your boss acted that way? He comes storming into a meeting saying “Damn it! Who moved the red pens to the back of the supply cabinet! If the guilty party doesn’t come forward, I’m canceling all raises!” Maybe you moved them there because they’re hardly ever used, but do you think you would be eager to confess at that time with your boss yelling at everyone? And do you think a teenager would even consider confessing?

If you want your kids to confess to something, you need to have an environment where they feel comfortable doing so. So for something like braiding the fringe, they should not feel that they will get in trouble for doing it.

Did anyone read the book “Catch Me If You Can”? At the beginning, there’s a part where Frank Abagnale charges up thousands of dollars on his dad’s Mobil card. Eventually the bill becomes due and his dad asks him what’s the story. Frank confesses that he was girl-crazy and he was using the money for dating. His dad says ok, let’s figure out what to do. Now there’s an example of a kid trusting his parent enough to confess. His dad didn’t yell and scream demanding the truth. Whatever their relationship was, Frank knew he could be honest with his dad. Of course, Frank Abagnale later went on to forge $2.5 million in bad checks, so I hope that doesn’t destroy the example in this case.

75

At the risk of being flamed here, I don’t get what everyone else is so upset about. I don’t think Dinsdale and Dinswife have serious control issues at all, even though I think their approach was bad. I think its evident from his posts he more worried about the lying.

76

I think that the parents have created an environment that is conducive to lying, and that is what upsets a lot of the posters here. FWIW, if I were a child in that family, I wouldn’t 'fess up, either. If Dad goes nuts and “reads the riot act” over blanket fringe braiding, (which was probably just done absentmindedly) what is he going to do about lying?

77

There are a few things that bother me about Dinsdale’s actions, although I wouldn’t go so far as other people have in accusing him of psychological abuse and whatnot. Just as a lying child isn’t a sinister juvenile-delinquent-in-training, an overreacting parent isn’t a child abuser. Both are just imperfect people acting imperfectly.

Here’s what bothers me:

  1. Dinsdale’s original reaction, reading the riot act to the kids, was inappropriate. Children could easily not know that they’d done anything wrong by braiding the blanket, and it’s inappropriate to upbraid (hee hee) a child for something that is neither dangerous nor forbidden ahead of time. He should have apologized to the kids for it.
  2. When it happened again, he punished all the kids in an effort to catch the guilty party. Good parenting models just, ethical behavior; this modeled unjust, unethical behavior. You simply do not punish the innocent in order to catch the guilty. He should have apologized deeply for this.
  3. He’s assumed the youngest kid was doing it and that it represents deep psychological issues in her. Although he may be right, his description of the situation doesn’t (IMO) support that conclusion at all.
  4. And even if he’s right, I don’t think yelling at the kid and making a big deal out of the blankets is going to help her with her psychological problems.

Again, I don’t get the impression that Dinsdale is a bad parent; I just think he’s not acted appropriately or usefully in this case, and I think that if he changes his behavior, he’s likely to see changed behavior in his children.

Daniel

78

You know, this method (punish all the children to catch the guilty party) was used a lot by certain teachers in my elementary school, and it never worked. Not once. I think that all it accomplished, maybe, was getting the perp beaten up after school. I don’t think that this is the kind of “justice” anyone is after.

Exactly. Why admit to braiding the blanket if it not only gets you in trouble but also reinforces in your parent’s mind that something is “wrong” with you?

(And I still think that the cause of the “braiding” is natural, especially if it raised such questions about sanity in Dinsdale’s mind. If this blanket looks like my blanket, the fringe doesn’t look exactly like a normal braid–it looks like a very intricate network of knots and twists, such as might be sone by a human being with way, way, way too much time on his hands. I actually tried to capture this on my scanner to show you guys, but it didn’t really show up well. Maybe I’ll try again later.)

Yes, and I don’t really want to “gang up on Dinsdale” with this. However, I too see this as a danger sign. You really, really don’t want to create the type of environment where your children feel they need to lie about the littlest things. My husband still feels the need to lie to his parents about the stupidest little things, like how much time it takes us to drive there, because…well, it’s just easier that way. It’s much easier when you can tell the truth and not have your parents flip out and not always be worried about how you are presenting yourself.

Let’s think about it this way…if one of the innocent kids had confessed to the blanket fringe braiding in order to save the ski trip, would you have been happy?

79

Sorry Dinsdale, but I AM going to gang up on you. I hope you’re even still reading this thread because you have a problem. It’s affecting all of your children, but IMNSHO it’s affecting the youngest the most.

This is how I see things happening:

One day the youngest is watching TV, with the blankets. Being quiet and creative type that she is, she finds the fringe and starts playing with it. Oh look, it can be braided together… and does so. Some kids would get up and find someone to show this to. She doesn’t. She just leaves it… maybe, just maybe, someone will find it and go ‘oh wow, look at that’ and try it themselves. Very passive type of thing, seems her personality, no?

Dinsdale finds it. Being an adult, his first reaction is not to examine the new thing that he’s found… it’s that his new expensive things have been DAMAGED somehow! Oh no, they’re all TANGLED UP! He sits down to untangle them, which takes forever. As he’s doing that he’s just getting madder and matter… the frustration of who did this to me mixed with the frustration of why can’t i get this undone already!!!

He finishes, and is FURIOUS. He gathers everybody together and ‘reads them the riot act.’ Everybody knows what happened, everybody knows it ticks him off. NOBODY is going to admit to doing it… the other two certainly didn’t do it, and the littlest is TERRIFIED now. She did it, hoped it was something nice, but oh no she did something HORRIBLE! She is probably quite traumatized at this point.

Now, one of the other two saw this. They realize it ticks dad off, and the littlest will get blamed. They have some reason to be mad at him, and know better than to try to confront him directly. So, passive aggressive (the only way to fight straight-up aggressive) attack by going out and braiding the knots up. Kill two birds with one stone… you ‘get’ dad, AND you ‘get’ the littlest.

Well what do you know, it WORKED! Dad got SO MAD he cancelled the ski trip!!! And EVERYBODY got punished, not just ME! Heeheehee! That was FUN! Wonder what ELSE I can do to upset him?

Of course, this is just my opinion. Based on growing up with a dad who would go bonkers over ‘nothing’, and having a brother and a sister, and all of us doing this to each other all our lives. Not that that bears any resemblance to YOUR situation at all.

I would like to know a couple things… first off, the original braids. Were they ‘patterned’? Was it quite obviously deliberate, did it fit right, did it make sense? How did that compare to the second time? If the first time were done ‘skillfully’ and the second time rather sloppily, it would reinforce the theory that it was sabotage the second time around, and just ‘playing’ the first time. If it was done equally skillfully, or better, the second time, then it was probably not sabotage, but rather creativity that just HAS to be expressed. Get some CRAFTS in that house!

I’m sure you have a ‘hate triangle’ among the children… I suspect if you asked the youngest who did it the second time, or rather had some neutral third party ask, you’d find out the truth. You’ve got a good kid, a bad kid, and a neutral, most likely. And as for you… get therapy. Now. YOU are the problem, not the children.

Sorry. Cope.

80

“It does not strike me as entirely normal and healthy for a kid to repeatedly do something that they know will piss off their parents.”

Sounds like she really wants attention - even “bad” attention is better than none.

I’m more concerned with her self-destuctive behavior or tearing her own hair out. Seriously, the blanket thing just PALES in comparison.

As for not punishing her without “proof,” your house ain’t a court of law. While I understand and appreciate you wanting to be fair, as the person who has been raising her for 11 years, you should be able to just trust your guts.

One more suggestion - in lieu of getting upset, have her untangle them one by one. She could do one edge a night for however many nights it takes and you can keep half an eye on her doing it while watching TV.

Patty