Oh, what a sad lesson, Nancy.

Learing things the hard way does make the biggest impression, unfortunately.

Nancy, you remark that lying really pushes your buttons. As always, there's usually a reason when something pushes our buttons, and this sad story probably explains one possible source. But try to remember that your painful experience from the past about lying is not Beth's. She sounds like she has this whole lying thing on of her own going on and if every time she lies you "go there" to your own sad exprience, you'll never be able to go where she needs you to go to get to the root of her own issues with telling the truth.

Nancy,

Have you ever tried a paradoxical intervention for Beth's lying? In other words insisting that she lie about the stupidest thing even when you both know it's not the truth?

After using every other technique, strategy, skill, under the sun I did this with one of my kids (who shall remain nameless) a couple of years ago and it seemed to bring the lying behavior to a screeching halt.

It was the craziest thing, but I told my kid, "Every time I ask you a question I want you to lie about it. *Every single time!*"

Then I made my kid miserable by asking all kinds of stupid questions. Is the sky blue? The only acceptable answer was: "No mommy the sky is (some crazy color)." Do you have four feet? The only acceptable answer was: "Yes mommy I have four feet." This went on and on and on for an entire day. My kid was so miserable with the craziness of it all, I swear to you that child has not told one of those ridiculous lies since.

I think this was the only way for my child to realize how ridiculously stupid some of (unamed child's)lies sounded. Before we did that, I think (unamed child) was clueless. Almost like there was some kind of brain disconnect where it just wasn't registering that "anybody with half a brain is going to know this is a bald-face lie."

As you mentioned lying is developmental. So my (unamed kid) will still try to get by with the occasional fib or two to avoid getting in trouble, or to avoid a lot of drama. That's fine. That doesn't make me crazy. I just manage that in a regular parent way. But that lying just for hell of it made me INSANE and I had to get a handle on it.

My crazy tactic worked, but it was might have been just a fluke. This probably won't work if Beth is oppositional defiant, though, in which case she'll absolutely LOVE the chance to say "up" just because you said "down." Sigh. You know how that goes.