ast fExperience with Pathological liars?

[CrazyinVA]

I think the part that drives me most insane is that even when caught in a lie, Oldest continues to lie. For a long time I found myself wanting to prove she was lying, only to find out when I did, it didn't make any difference.. it was like *I* was the crazy one.

I finally gave up. I was wasting precious energy trying to trap her in lies. The only person getting upset was ME, since she refused to acknowledge the truth even existed. Now I just nod and smile. Let most of them go in one ear and out the other.

I sometimes wonder if it all started with her dad. We split up when Oldest was 7. There was one final night of violence, him grabbing me and throwing me around, breaking down doors when I called 911, pulling the phone out of the wall, etc etc. A few weeks later, when she told him how scared she was that night, he told her it didn't happen. She was wrong. No such thing ever occurred.

Ahh well.

 

[muttmeister]

My younger difficult child wouldn't know the truth if it bit him in the .

He started by telling huge lies when he was little (before he started school) but he was different from most little kids. It was never a "there's a space ship in the back yard" kind of lie. It was always something that sounded reasonable and I fell for it far more times than I should have. I finally reached the point that the only time I believed him was when he told me something that seemed that it couldn't possibly be true because he was too good a liar to make up something like that. If he said he needed money for a school project, I knew he was lying. When he told me he was at a friend's house and the police came because two women got in a fight over a live chicken and one chased the other down the street with a knife, I knew it had to be true (it was).

We had counseling, psychiatrists, psychologists, reward systems, consequences, reasoning, yelling, and everything else any body could come up with but it didn't make a nickle's worth of difference: he continued to lie and he continues to lie to this day. I have quoted the line about "I know you're lying because your lips are moving" to him many times. He just laughs. It is like pouring water on a duck.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is, you probably aren't going to change hime. You just have to know that no matter what he tells you - good, bad, or indifferent- it is probably not true. It is a heckuva way to live but there it is.

Good luck.