So, I was over at my mom’s this morning as usual on Saturdays. My little great-nephew, Jeremiah, came out. Jeremiah is 5, and one of his habits that’s really starting to bother me is: he lies about literally everything. 

I’m kind of not kidding here when I say literally. Granting, it’s fairly innocuous stuff, but still, I’m getting a little bugged by it. I’ll give a couple of examples: He will walk up to me and tell me that he’s taller than me. And I can’t beat him in a race. Now I get that some of this is just childish challenge stuff that is meant to get me to chase him, and I usually exchange a little trash talk, pick him up and play rough him up, all the while essentially cuddling him. But it just doesn’t stop. Today we were going to pick up some food for lunch for my mom and aunt, and he tells me he doesn’t like meat. Ok, what about vegetables? I’ve never heard of food, he says. He’ll tell me his toy isn’t what I know it is; he’ll tell me other little fibs, and individually, I probably wouldn’t ever think too much about it, but I’ve been noticing for some time now that nearly everything he says is basically untrue, and I don’t get this. 

It was suggested that he is probably doing it for attention. This makes sense because his mom is a derelict parent who leaves her two older kids alone and hardly pays any attention to them. Both my wife and I do our best to play with them when we come over, and the boy particularly seems really desperate for attention and love, so it makes sense to me that the untrue statements are essentially a ploy for engagement. Perhaps he feels that if he just says the truth, it won’t grab our attention as much as an outright lie. 

I feel like I ought to confront this though and tell him straight out: look, knock it off. You’re lying, I know you’re lying, you know you’re lying, stop it. You don’t need to lie for me to pay attention to you. I love you just because you’re you, and saying these things isn’t making me pay more attention.  

But I don’t know if this is really the right diagnosis of the problem, or if it is, if it’s the right approach. But the lying thing is starting to bug me. I don’t think that can be healthy or good.