Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire

He's lying to us again.

Not that he ever really stopped, I suppose. It's just that things seemed to be going so much better. I guess Michael just got better at lying.

In May he asked to be allowed to skip two days of school for Revenge of the Sith. The first day was for spending at his friend's house, watching the other five Star Wars movies in a nonstop marathon with several other boys. Then, the next day, they were all going to go to the morning premiere of the movie.

Considering he was basically flunking out of the entire school year we gave him a very quick response. "Sorry kid, but no way. If you were getting good grades, we'd be willing to consider it, but you're not even passing. So, no."

We just found out he went to the movie anyway. He unplugged the phone when he got home so that we wouldn't get the school's automated your-student-was-absent-today phone call.

Other lies have come out, now that we are re-evaluating his behavior of the last few weeks. And, while Michael doesn't know that we know about the lies, the husband did ask him point blank if he was being fully honest with us. He swore he hadn't lied to us in any way. The lie came so easily, the words slipping out of his mouth like oiled soap in wet hands, that I felt a little sick.

I know that to some of you this is going to be no big deal. You are dealing with problems that make this kid's behavior look like nothing. And yes, I am grateful that he isn't in worse trouble. We think. The thing is, with this kind of lying going on, what do we really know about what's happening in his life? He's too good at telling lies. Too practiced.

Which means he's had practice telling lots of lies? I hope not.

If everything is only as bad as it looks on the surface, we still have a problem. If we don't find a way to counter this behavior and snap him back into realizing what matters in his life, he could be headed for real trouble. We both feel we have to respond to this forcefully to make him see we are serious. If this still isn't serious, we need to make sure our reaction helps to keep him from making mistakes that will be more serious.

Two more years to graduation and college. If he can get in. If he doesn't have to completely repeat this last school year.

Sometimes I would just dearly love to smack him.