What do you do when your young child is deceitful, when she intentionally defies your rules? You’ve probably tried explaining how truth, honesty, and trust are so important, but often enough, all your talking doesn’t help much. She’ll still look you in the eye and tell you things you know are untrue. If you’ve ever considered that your child perhaps has little sense of right or wrong, just know that all this is developmentally normal. Yes, your child’s deceitful behavior may drive you crazy and even worry you, but she’s ultimately trying to communicate her feelings and needs.
Let’s look at a few classic, deceitful behaviors to make sense of what’s going on inside your child.
The Wall Artist
The behavior: At bedtime, you notice a blue, hand-sized perfect square drawn on the wall in crayon beside your child’s bed. Earlier that day, your five-year-old had spent time in his room coloring with crayons. He’s never drawn on the wall, and the behavior now is so unlike him. “Why did you do this?” you ask in dismay, nodding at the wall. He seems unbothered and denies knowing anything about it. You’re more bewildered than outright angry, but despite all your attempts to understand what prompted him to draw on the wall, he repeatedly denies having anything to do with it.
It doesn’t make sense: why would he draw on the wall and then emphatically lie about it? You wonder if he’s regressing for some reason, though lately he’s actually seemed quite comfortably mature, doing well both at school and at home.
So, what’s up with this? How are you supposed to respond?
The key to understanding a behavior often lies in the details and nuance of the actual behavior.
The details and nuance: This child didn’t just draw on the wall; he drew a precise box. It’s as if he’s limiting the amount he draws by containing it within the box. Even though he’s drawing on the wall, it’s a very controlled and limited action, and this is an important clue: he knows he shouldn’t draw on the wall, so he limits the drawing itself.
It’s as if he’s telling you that he’s in control of himself. The action carries an attitude of, “I can do damage but I’m choosing to only do a little bit. I, and only I, control myself, and no one else. You can’t stop me, but I can stop myself, just like I did by only drawing a small box.”
In this way, he’s asserting some independence from his parents, which is developmentally appropriate.
The fact that he lies about drawing also makes sense: while his heart (the feeling part of him) needed to express his independence and self-control by drawing on the wall—I know, this sounds like a contradiction, but in the mind of a young child, it makes sense—his head (the rational part of him) feels ashamed. So, he lies. His intent isn’t necessarily to mislead or be dishonest; he’s lying to protect himself from his own shame.
What to do: Understanding what’s going on emotionally for him and his intent will tell you how to respond to the behavior. In this case, rather than scold or punish—which will only increase his shame—it’s better to name the feelings he’s having. Your expressing his feelings satisfies his need to express them, say, by drawing on the wall. You can also find additional ways to recognize his growing ability to control himself. For example, when he demonstrates how he can balance on one leg, you might respond, “Wow, you’re really improving how much you can control yourself and your body!”
As for the crayon on the wall, he can take some responsibility by helping you clean it up.
The Big Cheater
Behavior details: You are playing Go Fish with your seven-year-old who is clearly cheating: when you ask if she has a Jack, she tells you, “Go fish,” then asks if you have a Jack—which of course you do! When you point out she must have had a Jack when you’d asked her, she simply denies this. You think, My kid’s not just a cheat, she’s a liar, too!
Development matters: With cheating at games—and here we’re talking about any game, from Go Fish to chess—it matters how old your child is. Kids under five are happy to bend the rules, but as kids age, rules become more and more important.
What’s happening inside your child: Many kids cheat because they have an emotional need to win. Losing is a blow to their self-esteem. In this example, the girl is less concerned with honesty (an intellectual idea) than with imagining herself as good at something (her emotions). As with the Wall Artist, naming the child’s feelings will help her.
After all, she’s old enough to know that winning through cheating doesn’t mean much. That kind of win is a false one, and not a real boost to her self-esteem.
If your child is cheating at games, this is a time when how you play matters: rather than play competitively, you can play cooperatively in which you try to help each other improve at the game. You’re no longer trying to win. Instead, you discuss the game as you play it, helping your child improve her understanding and game strategy. As you help her get better at the game, she’ll feel better about herself and her skills.
While many kids cheat at games to boost their self-esteem, cheating can also be motivated by other feelings.
Another example: Let’s say your five-year-old wants to play chess with you. You try to teach him the rules but he ignores you, his pawn moving all about the board taking your pieces. When you try taking one of his pieces, he shakes his head, tells you your horse can’t move that way, and takes the knight in retaliation. And so it goes: one by one he annihilates all your pieces until you have none. He doesn’t seem focused on winning, but rather on destroying your side. Without batting an eye, he tells you to set up the board so you can play again.
You ask yourself, “What’s he getting out of this?”
What he’s getting out of it: To understand your child—and especially the behaviors that don’t make sense—tap into how your child makes you feel. (This is an essential piece of understanding kids and is covered in detail in the key post, “A Key Technique Therapists Use to Figure Out Kids.”)
In this case, it seems that your child is less interested in winning and more interested in rendering you helpless. He makes the rules. He controls the game. He is powerful and big while you are helpless and small. That’s the key. That’s what he’s getting out of so-called “cheating.”
Chess is no longer a game but rather a medium for expressing feelings; when you understand those feelings, you can respond to them. In this case, you have the opportunity to respond through the game itself. This is the basis of play therapy, a tool that parents can use to help their child work through difficult feelings.)
The cheater who loses
Here’s a spin-off of the above example.
Behavior details: You and your child are playing chess, and you can tell he badly wants to win. He has systematically taken most of your pieces, and just as he’s about to take your king and win, he delivers the “Big Boom” which knocks his king off the board while saving yours. “Oh no, you win!” he announces.
It doesn’t make sense; why would he suddenly reverse course? What emotions caused him to become the loser when he so clearly wanted to win?
What it means: When kids throw the game, they’re often showing us that they’re scared of winning.
If they have big feelings about losing, they might project these feelings onto you, imagining that you’ll hate losing as much as they. They fear that if you lose, you will become angry or even vengeful, and this would disrupt your loving connection with the child.
If a child doesn’t feel safe testing the connection between you two, he’ll have second thoughts about winning.
The Incompetent Thief
Behavior details: Your seven-year-old is stealing candy—from the big brother, or the candy jar, or wherever. The point is, he shouldn’t be eating the candy and he knows it. You know he’s stealing it because you find the wrappers under his pillow. When confronted with the evidence, he denies everything.
What it means: You have to wonder why he’s hiding the wrappers under his pillow where he knows you will find them. Is he really such an incompetent thief, or is there something more at play?
Poorly hiding the wrappers is the issue, not that he denies his actions—after all, what option does he have? His denial likely comes from his shame as well as his fantasy that he can banish his bad feelings by convincing everyone (including himself) that he’s innocent.
It’s fairly common for kids to hide incriminating evidence where a parent will find it. In this example, being a poor thief isn’t an intellectual issue; it’s an emotional one: this child actually wants his parent to know he’s stealing candy.
So, why does he 1) specifically steal candy, and 2) not bother hiding it well?
He’s seeking attention and sending a few possible messages:
1 I’m feeling angry and I want you to be angry, too.
2 I want you to know you can’t control me; I can take things if I want to.
3 I’m feeling empty inside. I want you to know how much I need to feel filled with good things.
These three messages are very different and require very different responses from the parent. To figure out which message is the child’s intent, the parent will need to consider how the child is behaving more generally. If he’s angry (#1) or wanting power/control (#2) or needing more connection (#3), he’ll be expressing these emotions and needs in many of his other behaviors.
When you feel you have a good sense of what’s going on inside your child, you can then address these emotions (see the “related” posts below).
Related Posts
How to Make Sense of Your Child’s Behavior: Some Examples
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Talking About Hard Subjects: Using an Indirect Approach
Whether talking to your child about Big Feelings or about difficult subjects, it’s sometimes best to take an indirect approach. Here’s how.
Using Play Therapeutically, part 2
What you actually do when using play therapeutically with your child.
Using Play Therapeutically, part 1
Therapists help children work through feelings and issues using play therapy, and you can use these tools, too, Here are some guidelines.
What Actually is Play Therapy and How It Works
If you’ve wondered what exactly happens when therapists “do play therapy,” this post will explain it all as well as how and why it works.
A Key Technique Therapists Use to Figure Out Kids
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3 thoughts on “How to Make Sense of Deceitful Behavior: Some Examples”
That’s a good point that JK made. Here’s another point that comes from something my 10 year old told me. I was talking to him about how he sometimes didn’t play fairly when he was younger and would cheat at games. He actually remembered this and said he cheated because he never felt it was fair playing a grownup who’s naturally better at games being older and more experienced. He said that cheating was just a way to make the game a bit more fair!
I never thought of it like that, but it makes sense. As the post points out, kids do things because of the feelings they have, not because they’re dishonest!
Thanks for the comments, JK!
The “Wall Artist” example was really interesting. On one hand, the child is trying to show his independence and self-control and that he’s maturing. On the other hand he does something a much younger child would do by lying.
I think lying can be a form of denial, which is often how little kids deal with things. They just deny and pretend like something didn’t happen. An older kid will come up with an elaborate lie, but little kids just plain deny something happened.
It’s interesting that the child is both trying to be mature but his shame makes him regress.
With my kids, shame has always been the biggest trigger for them, making them lash out or fall apart. Shame is so toxic! It’s hard to keep them from feeling ashamed and when they do, they often regress like the wall artist.
I also like the image of them cleaning off the wall together like it’s a bonding time. It’s so easy for me to get mad and resentful which then makes my kid feel even more ashamed.