Where does out and out lying play into Asperger's?

Page 5 of 5 [ 77 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Aspie1
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 7 Mar 2005
Gender: Male
Posts: 6,749
Location: United States

24 Feb 2006, 10:23 pm

tokaia wrote:
The only reasons I lied were out of fear. My parents would punish me equally (if not more) hard if I told them the truth. I learned that if I lied, more often than not, I'd save myself from a beating/scolding/grounding or two. Of course, physical punishment never taught me anything anyway, as the punishment never fit the crime. And yet I turned out just fine.

Anna wrote:
I had trouble with it when I was a child - I would lie about things a lot. In particular, if I thought I would get in trouble for telling the truth (my mother was a total b*tch). Even if I was telling the truth, I would get accused of lying. So, I didn't bother being honest. If I was gonna get disbelieved anyway... at least I might get out of trouble for a little while...

You two practically read my mind. When I was a kid, I quickly learned that confessing (i.e. telling the truth) was worse than useless. My parents would get very angry, and dump out the most severe punishment they can think of, all with a snide smirk on their faces. So simply put, there was no incentive to tell the truth, so I figured: if I can come up with a belivable lie, I can avoid the punishment. As I got older, my parents caught on to this, and simply stopped believing me whenever they didn't feel like it. So there were more disincentives to tell the truth, which taught me to fabricate more and more complex lies. In the end, I'd come up with a perfect lie: (1) it covers up most of the story that sets things against me, (2) still gets me into a little bit of trouble, just so my parents could believe the story, (3) and I get away with much less punishment than I'd get if I told the truth.

Now you may ask: "Isn't this more like a battleground than a family?" And I'll tell you: "Exactly!" That's how I viewed my relationship with my parents, as a zero-sum competition. My parents goal was to give me the most punishment, and my goal was to get the least punishment. The winner was determined by how well I could lie. So let's say there was a test in school. One of the three scenarios could ensue:
:arrow: I didn't study, and did poorly on the test (which was really hard). Knowing I "should" tell the truth, I showed it to my parents. When confronted, I admitted that I didn't study enough. Punishment: no TV for a week. My conclusion: my parents won, gotta lie next time.
:arrow: I didn't study, did poorly, but threw the test into a sewer; my parents later saw the grade on the report card. When confronted, I made up an excuse about not understanding the textbook, so no wonder I did bad. Punishment: no TV for three days. My conclusion: I had to take some blame, but nice cover-up :D. My parents won, though.
:arrow: I studied and did very well on the test. Experience shows that it's OK to tell the truth this time. When I showed it to my parents, they praised me on the good work, but warned me to keep it that way. Punishment: none. My conclusion: I won, since they can't punish me.

So if you look at these battleground scenarios, you tell me why aspie children shouldn't lie. If you punish them regardless of whether they tell the truth or try to cover it up, there's simply no incentive whatsover to be honest. Furthermore, if the lying is about grades, do you really want your children to get good grades just because they're afraid of punishment?

Not to be cliche, but there is a silver lining to this dark cloud. Living in the "battleground" taught me to be a perfect liar. I can't tell you how many times I've lied to my parents, teachers, professors, bosses, even police officers, all with a completely straight face and a credible cover-up. And guess what: they bought it every time. The goals of lying were only avoid the hassle that might come with telling the truth; I never lied when something or someone will suffer as a result. So I guess I should say thanks to my parents, since by teaching me to get good grades, they inadvertantly taught me how to lie. So parents, if you ever come across this, thanks.



NYnewbie
Hummingbird
Hummingbird

User avatar

Joined: 14 Feb 2006
Gender: Male
Posts: 23

27 Feb 2006, 8:40 am

Just because you tell a lie and nobody calls you on it doesn't mean you got away with it!

Kids and teenagers in general are very poor liars. I've found that kids and teenagers with AS are EXTREMELY poor liars. But the sad thing is, they don't know how bad they are at lying. After reading all these posts from people who THINK they are great liars I would like to ask them how they know they were/are such good liars? If the answer is "well, I never get caught" I've got to say that your fooling yourself. Every time that you lie the person your speaking to probably knows your lying but simply does not call you on it. The reason why is a combination of conflict avoidence and pity. The receiver of the lie says to themself, "this person is lying to me, I don't feel like arguing with them, I'm simply going to remember that this person is a liar and I should doubt everything they say"

I'd make a small analogy. Ok the kids that tried out to be on American Idol... many of them truly, honestly believed they were GREAT singers! They couldn't believe that Simon was sitting there telling them how bad they sucked. This is kind of the same thing with kids with AS that Think they are great liars.