Why teens lie
- Lori K Walters
- May 14
- 5 min read
OK, let’s have a show of hands. Who lied to their parents as a teenager?
All but three of us, right?
Are there one or two incidents etched in your memory? Or was it a long pattern of lying about almost everything?
I grew up in a very small town where there were only two options: a teenager was either cool or insignificant. Of course, I wanted to be cool and fit in, but I wasn’t allowed to do what other kids my age were doing. So, I took to sneaking around and lying, which led to more lies, more getting caught, more distrust, more rules, more lies...
Why did we lie to our parents?
For relief. They’d been grilling us so relentlessly that we just wanted to get them off our backs. So, we said whatever we thought would satisfy them enough to back off.
To protect our privacy and assert our independence. These are essential components of growing from childhood to adulthood; adolescents must feel separate from their parents.
To avoid being called an idiot.
To keep our friends or siblings from getting into trouble. Maybe it wasn’t information that was ours to share. Or maybe there was a risk of losing friends if we spilled the beans.
To avoid punishment. Psychologists say that teens parented with punishment are more likely to lie and that the fear of punishment turns kids into better liars.
To save ourselves from embarrassment. It might have been something we would have been mortified to say out loud.
To prevent our parent from breaking down crying and saying, “Where did I go wrong?” No one wants to feel guilty for making their mom or dad feel bad.
To get attention. Not the best approach but, if we were feeling neglected or misunderstood, this might have gotten us the notice we needed.
Because if they really knew, they’d freak out, yell, go into a rampage, or abuse us physically or emotionally. And it would all be our fault.
Because there was no point in telling the truth. We were already guilty until proven innocent.
To escape from hearing, “I’m soooo disappointed in you. You should be ashamed for your behaviour.”
What would you add to the list?
Does your kid feel safe to tell you the truth?
Now we’re the parents and, when our teenagers lie to us, it hurts. We wonder where we went wrong or what we said or did that prompted their dishonesty. You can roll it around in your head for days and second-guess and berate yourself and, in the end, it comes down to safety.
Whether it’s the four hours they spent in their bedroom trying to decide how to tell you something difficult or the split second when you ask them the question they don’t want to answer, their system tells them if it's safe to tell you the truth.
And I mean ‘safe’ by their definition, not yours.
In moments of truth-telling, all of us scan for a guarantee that it's ok to be ourselves right now and say the difficult thing. Our young adults look for that too.
If you were nodding to the list above and remember yourself as a teenager, how might you have defined the sense of safety you needed? What told you, or would have told you, that your parents would be ok with whatever you told them? Was it knowing that you wouldn't be interrupted, shamed, punished or disowned? How would you have described ‘a safe place’?
I’m pretty sure we’re going to have different answers; it makes sense that your teenager has a different answer too.
Many parents say to me, “My kids know they can come to me” but often, it’s just not true. They’re using their definition of ‘safe’ and failing to realize that their young adult needs something different.
Or they’re confusing safety with love. And let’s be clear, emotional safety is not the same thing as love. You can be a very loving parent and your teen may still doubt that they can be 100% honest with you.
Willing to receive their truth
Like every parent of teenagers, I've had to hear some things I didn't want to hear - things that shocked and scared me. And when fear was pulsing through my body, urging me to plug my ears and yell loud enough to erase it all, it was hard to hear what they were telling me. I felt like I had to pull each fiber of my being back into my body, one by one, as if reconstructing my central core so I could, despite all the alarm bells, come back into the moment and be with my big kid.
Of course, being a safe place is about connecting to your calm, solid center through visualization, breathing, or movement. It's also about listening. Well, more than listening, something I’ll call a willingness to receive their truth.
And this comes first. How you're going to deal with the situation, even what you're going to say in 10 seconds, don't matter in that first moment. What they've broken, what it will cost or ‘I can't believe you were so foolish’ must wait. What matters first and foremost is opening to receive whatever they're sharing with you, right here and right now.
That’s not easy to do in an alarming moment. But it's a capability that we can build, a muscle that we can gradually strengthen in ourselves by practicing.
A practice for you
Every day for the next 14 days, choose a low-stakes conversation in which to practice your openness to receive. Maybe it's a colleague complaining about the boss or your neighbour talking about his hydrangeas.
As they are speaking, tune into your body as a receiver.
Notice how you're holding your body and pinpoint where you're feeling/ registering what they're saying. Is it hitting you in the gut? Is it sparking up thoughts and images? Is it a certain emotion? Just take note of your way.
And then ask yourself how you can open yourself to taking in more of what they're communicating. To not be making meaning that isn't there but to hear the words they choose, how they say them and how they move. To be a receiver.
This is highly individual, so experiment and observe what receptivity feels like for you.
And then get curious about how you increase your receptivity. Do you focus your eyes a little differently? Does it work to roll your shoulders back or stand taller? Is it about shutting out the noises around you until all you can hear is their voice? Is it about pulsing love toward them or expanding your heart?
There are hundreds of ways in which humans receive truth from one another. When we exercise our ‘being-a-safe-place’ muscle, then, when we are in the heat of the moment with our teenager, we can more easily engage that muscle, like arms that have been strengthened by bicep curls. When you’re hearing something you don’t want to hear and feel a powerful urge to fight, fly, freeze or fawn, you will more readily open yourself to what they've chosen to tell you.
I believe this is what it means to be a safe place for your kids.
Each time they experience your openness and receptivity, they feel that unshakeable certainty that they can be themself right now and say the difficult thing. Each experience builds their inner knowing that they can trust you with their weird feelings, screw-ups and all.
That’s when we can say, “My kids know they can come to me.”
