End of my rope!

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My 14 year old aspie son is lying constantly and very munipulative. My husband and I catch him in lies all the time. The proof could be right in front of his face and he would still lie. We have taled to him until we are blue in the face and he still lies.

Does anyone have any ideaase as to how I can address this? I have taken everything away and ground him, but he does not care

I don't know. If he doesn't care, he doesn't care. Have you asked him why he lies?

We recently caught my 11 yr old son in several lies. He has never lied (to our knowledge) before, and had before this point been black and white, almost uncomfortably truthful. He had done something he wasn't supposed to, came to me and confessed, but then tried to "spin" the story so it didn't seem like quite so big an infraction, and ended up telling several lies and half truths. It was actually a pretty socially advanced thing to do (don't tell him that! ) So his lie was motivated by fear of getting in trouble.

My sons (my whole family) really love Lord of the Rings, and my sons want to identify with the heroes of the story (Aragorn, Faramir). So we were able to tie a special interest into the lesson, and have a big talk about honour vs lying, cowardice vs valour. I'm not under any illusions that my son will never lie to us again (pretty normal for a teenager to lie to parents from time to time), but I feel good about the fact that we were able to help him identify his own reasons for not wanting to lie, that he could relate to, and understand. I now know that he cares about not being a liar, and being an honourable person for his own sake.

None of this is likely to be directly applicable to your son, 14 is a world away from an 11yo I know! But I guess what I would want to know is why is he lying, and why doesn't he care about being a "liar"? It seems like getting to the bottom of this would be more productive than punishments.

I agree with annotated alice, you have to try to get to the why.

I read a thread on here where some of our AS adults noted that there was a point in childhood they had concluded that the whole world lied all the time and only suckers followed the stated rule not to. In which case, better get into the game and do the same.

It doesn't have to be a conscious conclusion; it may well be unconscious, but devastating all the same.

Remember how literal your child is, and how that plays out against this concept. Then think all of the times you tell them not to say what they really are thinking, the white lies of social convention, etc. There is a nuance there that holds no obvious logic to an Aspie child. My son has been pretty direct about that, when we're discussing the concept of tact: "you want me to lie." That is how he feels about it.

If you haven't been having these conversations nearly constantly since he was 8 or so then he's tried to hobble it together on his own and reached the wrong conclusion.

Or, maybe, he's just behind developmentally.

Lying is a normal childhood phase, but most kids figure out it doesn't work so well, and absorb the nuances associated with it, before elementary school is over, I think (not sure if I'm remembering all the ages and stages right). There are points where they seem to believe that saying something is so might actually make it so; lies are more wishful thinking than an attempt at deceit. Cute phase in a seven year old, but not in a teen. Still, what if that is where his brain development is at on this issue? You have to consider the possibility.

Or maybe he just can't deal with confrontation, and lies to avoid it.

You'll need to know which it is to decide what to do. But my bet at this age is the first: he doesn't understand the social rules properly and has given up, falling back into the self-preservation instinct of saying what he thinks protects him best.