compulsive(?) lying

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hi, i have recently started working with a young lad with aspergers supporting him in his family home. it has come to my attention that he very much likes to make up stories. at first i thought the main drive was seeking attention, but now, even though i still believe it is indeed what drives his behaviour, i am not sure whether he actually realises that what he says is a made up story and not a fact. he tells his stories with such conviction, and will often repeat to me the situation i only just described with changed names/places etc. could it be that hes not aware that hes telling lies? is this a known behaviour within aspergers syndrome? have any of you ever had a situation like this? what to do? challenge or ignore? any advice welcome. thanks.

I'm only a compulsive liar when around people that can't handle reality for too long a period of time. And by that, I mean years at a time.

Hard to say without some more background. How old is he? What is he making up stories about? Is he trying to get out of trouble by telling a lie or is he making up stories just kinda to make them up, as if to entertain you? Often ASD kids are known for telling the literal truth a lot but we've had a fair number of parents here who have struggled with kids who "lie". I guess I put that in quotation marks because I wonder if kids realize that what they are doing is lying. When my son makes up stories about something that happened at school, for example, it is pretty obvious that he is making it up. I'm not too sure why he does this. The stories often have him acting in a way I think he wishes he had acted but didn't. I call him on it and then he tells me what really happened and then we can talk about it. I don't make a big deal about the made up story that he told me. Once in a while we do have a discussion about how important it is to tell the truth.

In Tony Attwood's "The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome" it says: “First, due to impaired or delayed ToM abilities, the person with Asperger’s syndrome may not realize that the other person is likely to be more offended by the lie than by any apparent misdemeanour. Second, he or she may consider that a lie can be a way of avoiding consequences, or a quick solution toa social problem. What the person might not acknowledge is that lying can also be a way of maintaining self-esteem should he or she have an arrogant self-image, whereby the making of mistakes is unthinkable”.

It also says in the same book that children with AS sometimes escape into imaginary worlds with imaginary friends. Basically because they have such trouble with socialising with real people they invent imaginary friends and worlds where everything is OK for them.

How old is he? It's fairly common for all children around the 5 year mark to 'make up' stories - not a deliberate lie but a combination of forgetting that this happened some time ago and it didn't actually them but an event that happened to someone else..

I did this until I was a teen. I knew when I was lying but found it incredibly fun to see if I could get a person to believe me. It was just sport for me. Still is since I have directed that particular talent to writing books and short stories.
I stopped when I realized that people are greatly offended by being lied to, and trust is the most important aspect of any relationship.
I wish that some one would have told me that when I was a small child... over and over again.
I had a person take me aside and tell me that he knew I was lying and so did most of the people around me but they were entertained by my lies, so they tolerated me to my face but would never trust me.
So I recommend that you question this child. Ask "Did YOU actually do that or did you see it on TV, in a book, I just told you that etc"
Tell him what lies are and inform him that most people don't like to be around some one they can't trust.

You'll have to be patient and do it every time you think he is lying.
Be prepared. It will hurt his feelings but better hurt feelings than being allowed to be a compulsive liar as a grown up.
Also be prepared for him to be more elaborate next time he comes up with a story. Being told "I don't believe you." might make him more determined to fool you next time.

Another thing is let him know it's great to tell stories that entertain, and he is very good at it. But he needs to let the person that he is telling know that it's is a story he made up. It's not right to fool people.

Encourage him to write it down or illustrate his stories if he can. Have his parents do the same thing.
If he tells you a lie, do it right then...
Say something like "That's a great story. I know it's not true but other people might like to read it. Let's make it into a book so other people can enjoy it."
Then make a story book as part of his activities with you.

thanks guys. Frank is 9. lying to get out of trouble doesnt worry me as much cos the reason/goal is obvious here. the constant telling of the stories however has already brought undesirable consequences and i need to find a way to help him stop. Greenmamma, what you described seems very much like what Frank does, he will make up stories about everything and anything. i think its mostly to biggen up his ego, i believe (i am only guessing though) pretending that something interesting happened to him or someone he knows as opposed to an anonymous characteron the telly makes him feel more important. he really wants to be accepted by his peers and grown ups around him, but the kids often get fed up with his full on approach and he ends up feeling unwanted, bless him. the reason why i started questioning whether he knew he was lying was when i heard a few on my own stories told with Frank as the main character! i thought maybe he was confused and had problems differentiating between fact and fiction. he is extremely convincing and will stick to his story even when presented with an evidence showing what he said was a blatant lie. your reply Greenmamma makes a lot of sense now, especially after last friday when Frank did the exact opposite thing and started pretending he couldnt recall certain (positive) events. he was very convincing so i spent ages reminding him what we did, giving lots of details to help him remember only to hear he was only joking and he knew what i was talking about all along. he is a very cute, charming fun-loving lad, so yours seems like the most probable explanation. i will continue to observe him to prove or disprove the hypothesis, and will now challenge him consistently every time. we talk about trust and honour a lot but they dont seem to be important notions in his life at the moment. he is convinced he can always find other friends, or so he says, although this is not at all the case. great idea making him write down his stories. ill suggest it and let you know how it went

Most individuals with AS are honest even at the expense of themselves or others. One reason for this is many of them are naturally altruistic and will cling to social ideals that are taught to them at a young age. Another reason is that individuals with AS often have difficulty determining when it might be more appropriate to lie. To many with AS, there is no such thing as "white" lies or "little" lies. A lie is a lie. And then there is the issue of being caught. Many individuals with AS do not have the resources to cope with such a situation. They might have difficulty talking their way out of situations or glossing over them and are so might be severely punished for an offense that others might not be punished at all for.

So most individuals with AS are far more honest than those without AS. However those with AS who decide to embark on such dishonest endeavors....usually children, are probably incredibly bad at it, because, as another poster stated, they have theory of mind issues surrounding lying. They might realize that others lie and get away with it and reason that they should not be excluded from such a potentially advantageous thing. But as I said, they might not be able to distinguish white lies from big lies and they might not realize that others know they're lying or really understand the consequences of that. It's bit like a blind man trying to drive.

An aspie I knew in my teens was a compulsive liar. I believed every one of them. I don't know why he liked making up stories or pretending he is a victim. He start bullying someone and then he go and tell me how "mean" they are to him leaving out the fact what he was doing to them first. My brothers never told me how mean he was to them and he had me believing they were mean to him so I always yelled at them for it. Then he would thank me for defending him. I have no idea why he did it and it was something he did to everyone, not to me because I was gullible and naive. But he also had ODD.

^ THIS is an accurate description of my 7 year old daughter, we have told her time and time again that nothing is ever as bad as lying, that no matter what she has done we would rather she told the truth then lie about it. She only lies as stated above to avoid consequences when she has done something she shouldn't. So for example she somehow managed to rip her brand new dress when she was playing in her bedroom, she blatantly lied when I asked what happened "I don't know mummy, it just ripped" "did you catch it on anything?" "no, it just went pop and ripped like that, I wasn't doing anything, just sitting on the floor playing". It took an hour or so of reassuring her that she wasn't in trouble, that it was just a dress it didn't matter etc before she admitted what had happened, she'd been jumping off her bed (it's a mid-sleeper) and the dress got caught on part of it as she jumped.

Also the making of mistakes part, again she will not admit that she made a mistake, this has caused many many meltdowns around homework. She refuses to admit that she has made a mistake and if she does admit it she wants the evidence (i.e the homework) destroyed and she will start again.

At the same time she is very very honest about everything else, it seems the only time she lies about something is at home. If she's been naughty in public she will admit to it and also grass up anyone else who was involved. My mother in law once accidentally broke a display thing at a garden centre (she was lifting part of it down for my daughter to look at) she quickly hurried us away and when we got to the tills to pay for some stuff my daughter told the cashier that granny had broken something.

We had to take her out of school on a Friday once so we could make a trip to my hometown (it would have been too late after school), we told the school she was sick, so of course when she got back she told everybody that we had lied and that she'd gone on holiday. So now we have to lie to her and say she has the day off anyway that it's a school holiday (although we've only done that twice in the 3 years she's been in school).

When I was a child/adolescent I made things up alot and it was completely about fitting in and trying to be like the other kids. So for example during the summer break I'd be stuck at home alone most of the time whilst my mum was out at work, we did go on a couple of day trips but most of the time I'd be at home playing alone. Of course back at school I made up trips we'd been on exciting things we'd done etc.

Or when I was a little older (sort of 14ish) and the girls would go on about going out with boys, I would brag to the few people who would hang out with me that I had a steady boyfriend, of course he was older, had his own car, we were going to get married when I finished school...total BS because I felt I HAD to lie to be socially accepted.

I'm a terrible liar, as is my daughter, it's so obvious when we are lying because we can't look you in the eye, we stutter, mix words up,fidget and sound so unsure of what we are saying it's easy to pick apart. It was hard getting out of the habit of lying, I'd grown up getting used to the idea that lying was something you MUST do and it's taken years to get out of that mindset. My first reaction when realising I've done something wrong or whatever is always to instantly lie about it and 95% of the time I stop myself from doing that. If I do lie about it, it's such an elaborate unbelievable lie that I have to confess almost straight away because I know it's a stupid lie and I feel so incredibly guilty about lying.

Sometimes, it's also a social thing: to people on the spectrum, it must appear that NT people are inconsistent, horrible liars whose words make very little sense. Those of us in the know do not answer the truth to questions like "How are you?" or to "Do you like my dress?" We say things like "It's raining cats and dogs" when it's just raining plain water, and "What's Up?" but never look at the ceiling. We talk about things being "A piece of cake" when there isn't any cake anywhere and nobody is prepared to eat anyway.

To someone without a working knowledge of social rules, it must seem like everybody embellishes to make the story sound better and themselves look better. I can easily see where this literal interpretation of idiom and social rules could be taken as permission to say whatever sounds good at a given time. I'm not exactly sure of the way out of it, but I'm guessing that's where your "lying" is coming from.

Consider this ^ for sure when you are thinking about his motivations for lying. I urge caution attributing his actions to things like trying to pump up his own ego. One thing I have learned with my son is that his lying is probably more often motivated by anxiety and difficulty working out what lying really is. I have a doubt if the boy you are taking care of is actually trying to "biggen his ego". THis is much more of an NT and/or an older child type of motivation.

I also used to lie as a kid to avoid getting into trouble. I remember being told once by my mother that being honest gets you out of trouble. When I saw it didn't get you out of trouble, I kept on lying. I realize now I took it too literal and my mother probably meant if you are honest about your actions, you are in less trouble but you will not be punished as severely. I probably got in trouble for lying and for what I did and I just thought I got in trouble for what I did so I have to keep lying to stay out of trouble.

I also made up stories too as a kid and I also unintentionally lied because of the way I processed things and how my brain worked. One example be if I were up in the playroom with my brother and we were playing, then we had a argument and I hit him out of frustration. He would cry and tell our mother. She and him would be talking about it and then an hour later I be in the kitchen coloring, mom comes in and asks me if I hit my brother. I would say no. To an NT, someone who doesn't understand, may think I was denying it. If I got punished for hitting my brother and I got very upset for something I didn't do, they would probably think I was upset about getting into trouble and for getting caught and I am putting on an act and I am so good at it. But it wasn't because I was lying, I truly didn't hit him because he was not in the room so how can I hit him? I wouldn't even know my mom was talking about earlier in the day when I was in the playroom playing. It would take my mom a few hours to explain it all to me and had to draw pictures because I was very visual. Then finally I would tell the truth that I did hit my brother. I was that much work and it took patience.