Would you be so kind as to share those opinions, now that you've received varied replies from within our community?
I'm interested in how you (your community) would handle a child (starting off by) lying to his/her parents. For the sake of argument, let's say it's becoming a habit with little or no remorse.
I'm not pebbles, but I'll toss in my 2 cents. For my parenting cred, I'll' list that I have 2 children, ages 9 & 11, and that I have also cared for other children in my home for extended periods, and that I'm also a substitute teacher grades 3 year-old through 8th grade.
On lying, I've had more problems with other kids than my own, but we have gone over it too. So here's my schtick.
First, as any parent knows, it's not a single event. All moral teaching (all teaching of any kind, I think) is a block by block structure built over years.
But with kids I only get for a week, we have less time, so I'll relate that "crash course", knowing it's the basis for the long haul, too.
It starts with finding out why the kid is lying. Is she lying because she is scared of the results? Lying because she wants something she knows she won't be given? Lying because she is seeking notoriety (attention)? It matters what is the source so you can get her attention in a way that she admits that it applies to her.
I talk them through what lying looks like to others. How are you perceived when people realize you have lied. What your world would be like if your lying felt to others like "permission" to lie to you. What doors open and close with truthful reputations and lying reputations. What you start doing to yourself if you permit lies in your life (e.g. taking the easy lie, and fooling yourself that no one has noticed).
I talk to them about a person's reputation. How is one built, who builds it, how it can be damaged or taken away. Your reputation is your own - it is your treasure. You want to guard it like a treasure, never letting it spill or gambling with it. Rebuilding your treasure takes ten times as long as losing your treasure.
We talk about how a known liar would be treated in society, and how they would have to be treated in a house. How people would protect themselves against this liar and not associate with them if they can avoid it.
We talk about how to get past the situations that made them want to lie in the first place - how to face up to fear and want and insecurity without lying. We re-play the lie and role-play the better path, so that the child can feel themselves making the right choice.
We point out people facing up to these things when we see them.
And then, if it's someone who is in my care where I have to live with them (not in school, e.g.) then they will face a "probation" sort of period, where the fact of their lie results in bags being checked, whereabouts being checked, etc, until they have shown that they want to live a different way than the lying choice.
If it's in school, I work on the same kind of thing but with the phrase "you must be accurate" instead of using the word "lying", and work on how they must be checked if they have trouble being accurate.
In short, I try to address the reason they didn't understand that lying was bad enough to avoid. The gap in their understanding of human interactions.
You're right. It was the thumb. In my case I have fat pinky's so it would not have made much difference anyway.