[cb131]

My 4 soon to be 5 Sk & her brother 3 yr old R share a room & there was some damage to the wood frame of the bed,well Sk makes a big deal to tell daddy r did the damage while r was screaming noooooooo.Well dh puts r in time out & does the whole disipline thing & all day long has r repeat that he will never do that again .Then I get home & dh & I are talking about it & I said do you think R can acctually do the damage because it would take alot of hand eye coirdination.Ut ohhh dh gets a sick look on his face.I take the kids in the room & ask who did it cause it looked really nice & although it is not to be done on thei furniture I would love to tell their teacher about it & she could come see the work.Well then Sk says she reallly did it & i asked why did you let R take the fall & she says R did it then she says she did it back & forth .I am 60% sure she did it maybe 80%.I put her in time out for lying but I don't know how to talk to her about it.(For real)any ideas would be appreciqated.

[wrekdiver]

Ouch...I think I would apologize to R in front of SK. Even though R isn't going to understand much, it will send SK the message that everyone has to say their sorry for their mistakes. Then discipline SK in the manner you normally would...and then forget about it. It happened and now everyone must move beyond it.
Oh boy do I feel for your husband. Perhaps, years from now, you will laugh at this.

P.S. Nice interrogation method for getting it out of SK

[Kate1129]

Do say sorry to R. I think that would be a good thing! Putting Sk in timeout is a good idea too. Then I'd take it a step further and make it a point to not believe anything Sk says. Show her that no one believes things a lyer says.

I know that not everyone will like what I had to do to get my 4yr old fs to understand how much lying hurts, but I woke up one day and decided I just couldn't take it anymore. So I told him all day long how we were going to the circus and eat ice cream and cotton candy and do all the things he loves to do. Then when he couldn't handle it anymore (the waiting) I said "Oh sorry I lied". He learned real fast how much it hurts! He hasn't lied to me since and it's been 6 months. I am not sure I would recommend doing it, but in a moment of weakness, I did it.

[healingmachine]

hi there---


just wanted to pop in to say that i don't think it's fair to punish SK for lying when you weren't exactly honest to get her to tell the "truth" (which you still don't really know)...

i guess my advice would be to sit her down and talk to her about respect and how to treat people's property. is she at a point in her life where she can understand the importance of this?

maybe also talk about being truthful...you know, i read something somewhere (sorry, i know that's awful!) but a family had put into place a special chair where the kids could sit and tell the truth about ANYTHING without being judged...something to that effect. well, either i stole that idea from someone on here (sorry) or i just read it in the new Parents magazine.

anyway, i'm not trying to come down on you with what i said at the beginning of this reply, but i really strongly believe that the most important way to teach our children is to model our morals and values. i know that can't always be the case, but 4 going on 5 is such an impressionable age!

good luck!