How To Know If Your Adolescent Is Lying To You
Identifying the continuous lies in adolescents early can be key to preventing behavior problems. We help you to know if your child is lying to you.
How do you know if your teenager is lying to you? Communication between parents and children is always a matter of study and reflection, especially in relation to lies and deception in this stage of transition to maturity.
In this study we developed this topic so that as a parent you can find out if your teenager is lying to you. This attitude usually involves deeper issues, such as behavioral problems, emotional disturbances or difficulties in family communication.
When you realize that your teenager is lying to you
When parents realize that their adolescent is lying to them, there comes a turning point. Parents sometimes avoid talking to their child for fear of lying, as if they closed their eyes to the problem. At the same time, the son feels the lack of confidence and also avoids talking to them.
In this way, a gradual withdrawal is created and parental supervision is also difficult. And in the long run, if it is not solved, this adolescent behavior could lead to difficulties relating to their environment, aggressive behaviors, loss of self-control, etc.
For this reason, the first step is to recognize if your adolescent is lying to you on a regular basis. If this happens, it will be time to seek professional support to solve this problem and regain the healthy bond between parents and children.
How do you know if your teenager is lying to you?
Some indicators
To begin with, if you are reading this article, it is because you already suspect that your teenager is lying to you. In that case, you may have already detected one of these indicators:
- He exaggerates when relating things he has experienced.
- He often resorts to white lies.
- He doesn’t tell you about things that are happening to him at school, such as about teachers or test results.
- You learn from others about things in which he is involved.
- Show photos (for example, on social media) that show only a very positive part of who you really are or live on a daily basis.
- You are not sure what he does when he goes out with his friends.
- He only tells you part of the story when you ask him.
Body language
In addition, at the time we speak with our son we can also be aware of some detectable signals through his body language. These will help us to detect if what counts is true or not and will be more evident at a younger age.
For example, he will avoid looking you in the eye in the first place while lying to you. In addition, it could be that he was looking to the right, an eye movement that is related to the imagination, that is, to the possible lie. Your voice may also tremble slightly and your hands may sweat.
How is it expressed?
When you ask your child a question, you can also pay attention to his way of communicating. He will never have the same facility to speak if he tells you something that he has actually lived, as if it is invented on the fly.
For example, if you lie, you may repeat the same thing several times or give too much detail about the situation. In this way he would be seeking to justify something unreal and he would betray himself by exceeding himself.
Emotional difficulties
Every teenager has ever lied to their parents. This stage of change presents many attractions for the child who already feels older and wants to try everything. However, if the lies are recurrent, we must also look at how our child is emotionally.
An adolescent who lies may be manifesting emotional difficulties. For example, a low self-esteem, a stage of depression or stress or a strong feeling of loneliness. By lying, he would seek to show a person that he is not, but would like to be. Or protect his parents from worrying about him and be able to figure it out on their own.
As parents, it is essential to detect the lies of our adolescent son in time. Only in this way can we prevent negative behavior that would greatly harm the family relationship and trust, and also the child in their social relationships.
