What are you doing when your toddler lies?

Depends on the lie, but it's important to remember they aren't always lies, some of it is their imagination and creating a story. For example my daughter has told nursery we have a cat called ginger and has told them all sorts of things that someone with a cat would share, I had to tell them we don't have a cat or any pets, this we just let her carry on with it, as it's a story not hurting anyone.

But then she told us one boy at nursery was smacking and pinching her to the point she was hysterical going to nursery, informed nursery who kept a close eye on it and turns out my daughter was saying this if he was playing with something she wanted 🫣 this we corrected and said it's not nice to tell stories about others that will get them in trouble.

Depends on your child's level of understanding. I tell my son his ears go red when he lies. So when he's caught out I'll ask what colour his ears are. He will sometimes try and rub his ears to 'wash' them green again (green in his head is obviously good). I also ask if it's good or bad to lie. But we have lots of conversations about now he might feel if his actions were done to him. And how he has a great understanding of how to behave and not to behave. But it's all dependent on how much your child understands as everyone is different

It's something developmental where they learn there's different versions of reality I.e. me and you both could come away from one event and report on it differently. I think it's called theory of mind. I'm just trying not to deliberately catch her out. Here's something I saw the other day which was useful. https://www.instagram.com/share/_j6KtvuRo I also concentrate a lot on praise for telling the truth so even if it'd be bad consequences for the behaviour normally I.e. I said something unkind to someone today I praise a lot for the truth. Obviously different things work for different children.

I don’t really view these things as lies, as they may be just imagination. For example, when my son says somebody hit them in the nursery today, I say generally: “if someone hits you, you should go tell the teacher”. Or when he says: “no one played with me today”, I say: “you can ask children to play with you by offering them to do something they like doing”. In both cases I knew it’s not try because either that child wasn’t that even in school that day, or I saw his play with kids through the window. If he says something that we did which isn’t so, I just say no we didn’t do it, we did XYZ

My little girl still is working on her communication but I have noticed her tell “lies” . A lot of it is just her not understanding though in her case. I have watched something play out between her and her sister and when I have asked her what happened she has explained wrong and actually made herself look like she has done something wrong. This worries me as I don’t want people being cross with her because she isn’t able to explain what has happened. I noticed her baby sister hit her and then cry and she didn’t do it back but she was then saying “sorry mummy” over and over to me and it made me really sad 😅 The other day though I bathed them both and I got the baby out to dry and dress her first and she called out to me saying “mummy I want to get out” I told her I’d be with her as soon as I can and she said “I need to go wee wee” but when I got her out. She looked at me and pointed and said “mummy I tricked you!” 😂 she didn’t need to go