Teen’s Ridiculous Lies
When I was younger (around 12 or 13) I found a bag of jelly bean that belonged to my stepmom. I knew they were hers and I should ask for permissions to eat some. But I also knew she would probably say no. (She was very strict about sweets.) So I took them without asking. I was sitting on the floor putting them in to piles by color (something I often do with candy which was one of the first signs of my OCD) when she walked in on me. She confronted me about taking her jelly beans. I said, “I didn’t take them. They fell out of the bag and I was picking them up.” Yeah, right. I was picking them up by sorting out the reds, orange, yellow, etc. Of course, she didn’t buy my ridiculous story and I was punished.
What is it with teenagers and lying? Often times it’s such an obvious lie, but they will still keep going. Do they think if they keep going on and on with the lie that we will eventually think we are the crazy one and let them go?
Earlier this week my teen and some friends went to Best Buy during their free period at school. On our way home from school that day he told me he used the gift card he got for Christmas to buy Call of Duty 5 for the Xbox. I didn’t think much of it. He does have a free period. And he did get a $50 gift card to Best Buy for Christmas.
Then last night my husband found the Best Buy receipt hidden in the couch. He didn’t just buy Call of Duty. He also bought a 12-month Xbox Live card and some Microsoft points…for a total of $125. My husband was ticked because he thought the teen used some of the money he is supposedly saving towards a car.
I took a look at the receipt and noticed he didn’t use any money. Instead he used three gift cards; two $50 cards and a $30 card. I immediately assumed he must have used his brother’s gift card. His brother had been in his room most of winter break so I’m sure he accidentally left his gift cards in there. So we confronted the teen.
“What did you buy at Best Buy?” my husband asked.
“Call of Duty 5,” he muttered and then paused. I think he could tell we knew that wasn’t all he bought so he continued. “And an Xbox Live card…[bigger pause]…and some Microsoft points.”
“How did you pay for all that?”
“My gift card.”
“You only had a $50 gift card.”
“I found another one in my dresser.”
“On top of your dresser.”
“No, in my dresser. In a sock.”
“Really? But you used three gift cards,” my husband questioned.
“My friend had one and he let me use it.”
“You’re friend let you use his gift card to buy yourself something?”
“Yeah.”
Clearly he was lying. And he knew we knew he was lying. His excuses were pathetic.
There was some more stumbling where he went back and forth about where he found the gift card and which card his friend gave him and blah, blah, blah. We excused him before we lost our minds.
After a few minutes we were able to calm down and have a discussion with him about the lying.
He tried to go right back to his story and I had to cut him off. “Please don’t continue to lie to me. It’s just going to make me mad, we’ll add end up in a screaming match and you’ll end up grounded.”
Eventually he did admit to lying. We talked about how important trust is in a relationship. We explained that we need to be able to trust him if he wants to be able to do things like, you know, leave the house unattended. But how can we trust him if he lies about little things like this. I’m not naive enough to think he’ll never lie again, but I think it was a very good talk.
Oh and he had to use his “car money” to pay his brother back. It may be some time before he gets to drive on his own.
I’m always afraid to know what I’m really teaching my daughter.
It isn’t going to be the spelling lesson she remembers. She might remember the cranberry muffin recipe that I taught her and my grandmother taught me, but I doubt it.
What she is likely to remember is the stuff I’m not even aware I’m teaching her. She can already rattle off my stock Starbucks order. She probably also knows that some of the people who spend the night aren’t relatives.
Yesterday, you spoke of your son’s missing cell phone. As an aside you mentioned that your husband might have lost it but wasn’t confessing.
I have no way of knowing where the cell phone really went but I wonder if there is a lesson on truth buried there somewhere?
As for me, all my lies are lies of omission. Sometimes what we don’t say are the real whoppers.
—Isis
Wow … you sort things by color before eating them too! Things a Mom doesn’t know about their daughters
I always sort my M&Ms by color before I eat them. The people at work think I am a little wierd.
Regarding the missing phone … I was there when we believe that the phone went missing. It is not a question of lying or ommission. It is simply a question of know one really being sure exactly when and how the phone went missing. Though the sound of something falling off the roof of the car as we left a rest stop is a clue that this may have been when the phone went missing (though at the time we thought it was a drink) – since we never saw it after that. No one is really sure if it was the teen misplacing the phone or the Dad misplacing the phone (or even one of the siblings). So, the teen isn’t being penalized for the missing phone.
I think all boys, who will be men someday, have the “Subway was robbed” gene.