Last October I wrote a couple of posts (here and here) about Beth’s problem with lying and my problem with Beth’s problem of lying… Well, we are (or she is) still at it. The second previous post I linked is the story of my last lie as a child... and what it was that had such a profound impact on me that I stopped lying.


Beth was ten last November. When I researched developmental ages and stages the last time I wrote about lying, I was surprised to see how little definitive information I could find by Googling Developmental age and stage lying. Most of what is out there relates to preschoolers… or sociopaths. Not much about the tweeners.


There were a few references to Piaget’s hierarchy of development. Another resource can be found here. And here is an interesting tidbit about adoption and pathological behavior.



Most of what I could glean from my Internet search indicates Beth should be pulling out of this stage by now. Some of the literature lists 11-15 as the next developmental stage, where kids of that age function more-or-less like adults in terms of brain activity—the difference being degree of experience and knowledge accumulated. So there is still some fudge-factor room here… but what is disturbing me is that it doesn’t seem to be changing at all.


Here’s what precipitated this resurgence of my need to address this problem:


Beth has a sweet tooth, and an affinity for junk food and snacks. Don’t we all? However, I am forever finding candy wrappers and chip sacks around the house. Ok, ok, she’s ten, I get that… but… She has had three days of math assessment testing, so yesterday when she arrived home from school I fixed her one of those rich, large microwave cakes. Major sugar overload… but she was going to swim practice so it seemed like an OK plan. After she finished it, she told me how full she was and that she wouldn’t likely want anything else before swimming. A few minutes before we were leaving, I spy an Easter chocolate egg wrapper on the kitchen table. “Who left this here?” I inquire. “Not me!” “Are you sure?” “Yes, I’m sure, it wasn’t me!” Well, Julie, our foreign exchange student was upstairs, but I didn’t think it was her.


Three times I asked my little darlin’ about the candy… three times, like Peter, she denied it, all the while giving me full eye contact. As we piled into the car to go to swim practice, I turned to her and informed her we weren’t leaving until I got the real scoop. So she ‘fessed up. She had the candy and left the wrapper on the table.


Now, you might ask, was the wrapper left there on purpose? Was I supposed to notice it? Or is she just lazy? I favor the latter, because she is more than happy to do the same thing under other circumstances. But who knows?


Next installment I’ll tell you how I responded.

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