Question
I asked a question about my 8 year old sneaking sweets - we have since carried out your suggestions - but it is not working. She looks for other ways to get sweets. We allowed her to buy some cup jelly in school but she swapped a 50 cent coin to a $1 secretly to buy more in school. So we said she is not to have any lollies for 30 days. This has started over a few times from her friends handing out party bags in school. Soon I know she will not tell me about these party bags. She goes to great lengths to hide and lie about treats even though we give her permission to eat them sometimes and ask for them - and we do not believe we restrict her too much. She steals the Nutella, the baking chocolate, the choc chips used for baking ... and then innocent and calmly lies. I think there are two issues here - lying, of which she is caught doing regularly ; and obsession with sweet foods. Would it be fair to say, we do the garden kick for habitual lying? She lies to get her way, when she is afraid of a consequence, she lies to get out of things... I can never be sure when she is telling the truth. We have had this problem with her and tried to deal with it from 4 years old (unsuccessfully) - before ignoring it.. but we find she lies again and again over different things. Now she’s 8 and getting extremely good at sneaking and hiding things. What should we do?
