Preschoolers Need to be Taught to Tell the Truth

A preschoolers brain starts to go into full understanding as they get closer to the 5 year old mark. They now can look at consequences and rewards and understand how to get something good or to avoid something bad. They now purposefully begin to not tell the truth. It is not necessarily lying, but it is. They realize they just might be able to get out of a sticky situation if they make up a new reality.

My preschooler is doing just that. With two, two years apart, I knew problems would begin to develop.

Now when my son hits his sister, he tries to tell me she hit the wall. This is really quite ingenious since she is no where near the wall but sitting in the middle of the playroom!

Our strategy to stop it... encourage him to tell the truth and as my mother always say, don't give them the opportunity to lie. Don't ask "What happened?" They will make up a story to get themselves out of trouble. My daughter is too young to tell us so he thinks he has the freedom to create. Not true.

We are now making sure he knows he will be disciplined, but we give him lots of praise for telling the truth.

What is your strategy?