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What is one of the most frequent complaints foster and adoptive parents make about parenting their traumatized children? If you said lying, then you have probably experienced it from parenting your own adopted children. At a recent support group meeting I attended, the speaker shared that she didn’t understand why foster and adoptive families get so worked up about lying and stealing. In her 30 plus years of experience as an adoption professional, she said that she has come to realize that all children lie. Lying is especially common in traumatized children, even after they are adopted because their thought patterns have been altered by their trauma.
Their brains go into flight or fight mode with even the least bit of anxiety over a question from an adult. You can’t tell traumatized children that they won’t get into trouble if they just tell you the truth, because it doesn’t help. They are already drowning emotionally half way through your question.
If you began your journey to adoption as a foster parent, then you probably received many hours of training, telling you not to take anything a traumatized child does personally. My husband likes to remind me of this frequently. I do think women tend to take things more personally than men because we like to analyze and read between the lines.
Writing this is therapeutic for me, because I have been dealing with an excess of lies lately from several of our adopted children. Our 10 year old has been lying about completing her schoolwork for years now. I mistakenly thought it would diminish once we were able to begin homeschooling her.
I thought that she wasn’t doing her schoolwork at public school because she wanted to be homeschooled with our other children. We had to wait until the adoption paperwork was completed to begin homeschooling her. She was our only child attending public school, which made her feel different and separate from the family.
She got away with lying about completing her schoolwork for a month of homeschooling. This was because her therapist suggested I allow her to choose whether to turn in her work to me or not. We had started a credit sheet that allows the children to earn money, candy, and other rewards for doing things like their chores and turning in schoolwork. She was telling me the work was finished each day. I was waiting for her to choose to turn it in to earn credits. She wasn’t actually doing the schoolwork.
Her consequences for that involved missing a Christmas party that she had hoped to attend as well as dropping out of the church play. I thought those consequences were significant enough to prevent future deception about schoolwork. I was wrong.
Last week, she told me everyday that her schoolwork was completed. Because of extracurricular activities, I didn’t get a chance to look at her work until Thursday. She hadn’t done it all week, but told me each day that she had. She sat at the kitchen table the rest of the evening getting caught up. I am an eternal optimist, but these events finally convinced me that I needed to check her schoolwork everyday.
Today, I left the house for four hours, between noon and four. Before I left, everyone was doing schoolwork, and Ty, the eight year old, had completed his. When I returned home, she was playing with Ty and Ali. I asked if her schoolwork was complete and she said, “Yes.”
I said, “You know I need to look at it after supper.” She nodded and handed me her workbooks. When I looked through them after supper she had not done any work in language arts, but is assigned four pages a day. She only did one page in history, instead of three, zero pages in penmanship instead of one. Well I am sure you get the picture.
We had the usual talk about trust and how if negatively affects our relationship with each other. She got tears in her eyes, which she always does. She is an affectionate and loving child and doesn’t like to hurt my feelings.
I asked her about the one page she had done in history at this point. She told me that she had done the last page of a quiz and then read the next two pages. Really, I said, “What were the two pages about, because I don’t see anything highlighted or underlined.” That is when she confessed that she hadn’t actually read them. That’s the trouble with lying; you have to keep telling more lies to cover up the original lie.
I gave her my best disappointed face and told her to take a shower and go to bed. I know I have been doing this for 14 years and know the ropes. But, it continues to baffle me that consequences do not modify behavior.
Photo Credit Julia Fuller 2006
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Hmmm: consequences … behavior … consequences … behavior … NOPE — sorry, no connection there !! Not for my child, anyway … Rachel
Lying is an emotional developmental delay for children that were abused/neglected prior to age four. All children lie at that early stage to achieve joy in the moment. Telling the truth becomes a value later based on the attachment relationship with the caregiver s. Lying becomes a survival behavior to achieve joy or pleasure at the moment. Most parents get quite upset with lying behavior but it will remain a survival behavior until the trust relationship with the parent is developed.
Consequences work for lots of children. Children without trauma. Children born into loving homes who have been raised and nurtured with love. But then, anything will work with these kids.
Our kids are different. That’s why I’m always surprised to read on these blogs consequences consequences consequences. You really need to get beyond the behavior into the underlying emotion al issues with this child. Why is the child lying? Are they afraid to tell you the truth? Why?
But then go deeper than that. Why is the child having so much difficulty with the schoolwork? Is she insecure? Is it realistic to leave a child alone to do all their school by herself when she’s proven over and over that she’s not able to handle that responsibility. Yet. Doesn’t mean she never will be. She’s just telling you that she’s not ready yet.
I “read” my sons hidden messages to me regarding some difficulty he was having at school. We took a few steps back, together, and he’s now vaulted ahead. His teacher today even acknowledged it. I’m lucky to have developed a relationship with him where he’s very comfortable and is learning very well with my gentle and loving guidance. If I leave him on his own, he’d be sunk. I have no doubt that this won’t last forever so I don’t worry or fear for the future. He’s building up good positive experiences to replace some negative ones and he’ll be off his own before we know it. It’s work for me, for sure, but well worth it.