The Surprising Way to Get Your Teen to Be Honest With You

Trusting your teen is an integral part of having a strong relationship with them, but it can be a struggle when your child isn’t honest with you.

My young teenage daughter lied to me the other day. It wasn’t a whopper, but it was one in an ongoing saga of lies and a few bad choices that we’ve dealt with over the past few years.

So, instead of punishing her, I took her to Starbucks for a sugar-laden coffee drink.

Let me explain. We’ve cracked down on every mistruth she’s told before. We’ve grounded her and taken her phone privilege away. We’ve talked (ad nauseam) about building trust. We’ve argued and pleaded. We’ve had her work toward earning trust back.

We’ve done all the things, yet we still keep arriving at the same spot.

Why is building trust with your teenager important?

Trusting your teen—especially in this day and age—is essential. And if we can’t trust her with the little things, how can we trust her with the big things?

How can we put her behind the wheel of a car or believe she’ll call us when she’s in trouble or tell us if someone is hurting her? How can we send her off to college or on trips without us? How can we give her more autonomy as she moves into adulthood when we feel like she is never honest with us?

A relationship based on mutual trust with your teen is crucial for so many reasons. It helps with their emotional development, promotes responsible decision-making, builds self-esteem, models a healthy relationship, and makes clear and consistent communication and setting boundaries possible, which is better for everyone. It can also help adolescents to feel more connected to their parents so they can better handle issues with their peers, navigate external pressures, and manage stress.

Most importantly, it strengthens the parent-teen bond and equips teenagers with the skills and support they need to navigate the challenges of adolescence and beyond.

Related: Here’s How To Fix A Difficult Relationship With Your Teen

How to build a trusting relationship with your teen

So, the other day, when she got caught, I was exasperated. I was at the end of my rope. I was over it.

When I confided in a friend, she stopped me in my tracks when she quietly said, “Don’t you remember how much we lied to our parents growing up?”

“But that was different,” I immediately responded.

And she laughed because, of course, I already saw the irony. “Your teen will lie to you,” she said. “About something. It’s inevitable.”

So, we talked about the reasons why I lied to my parents when I was growing up. Of course, it was because I felt like they could not relate to my life. And that I knew they would say no to me. And I was embarrassed to tell them certain things about boys or my friends or where I was going. And I wanted to protect my privacy. And that I didn’t want them to be disappointed in me. And my personal favorite, I simply didn’t want to receive a lecture so I lied in the heat of the moment a lot (apparently psychologists call this conflict avoidance.)

I was different from my parents, though. Except lying between teenagers and their parents has happened since the dawn of time. Trusting your teen was a problem parents have had since, well, forever.

In my mind, I created a personal narrative that justified my lying to my parents back in the day way more than my daughter’s lying to me now. I said to myself, “I didn’t lie about small things,” or “I talked to them about the important stuff,” but the truth is, sometimes I lied simply because it was easier.

I was so uneasy with the path my daughter and I were going down. I was caught in an ongoing circle of Hell with her and the lies. I was looking for them all the time. I constantly asked if she was telling me the truth. I had to stop myself from checking up on her all the time.

There was a constant power struggle between us. She wanted more independence, and I simply wanted her to follow some simple family rules. She was looking for more responsibility and all I saw was immaturity. She needed compassion and all I felt was frustration.

This was never the relationship I wanted with one of my kids.

Related: How To Have A More Peaceful Relationship With Your Teen Guaranteed

What can you do to build a sense of trust with your teen?

So, when I caught her in the last fib, I told her we would talk about it the next day instead of my normal flipping out or incessant lecture or off-the-cuff punishment.

After she came home from a long school day, I loaded her up in the car and took her to the closest Starbucks. I let her buy whatever she wanted, and we sat down.

We chatted about her day and the plans for the weekend. She told me she was frustrated with her math teacher, and I discussed a meeting that went wrong.

And then I told her we needed to have an adult conversation about trust and accountability for our own decisions.

I shared that I used to lie to my parents, too, sometimes. I told her how lying got me in more trouble than it was worth, and how it hurt my relationship with my parents when I got caught–and now, looking back, how I could have done things differently. I explained that I wish I had more courage with my dad, and that I believed my mom when she told me I could talk to her.

I then talked about the different ways I wanted to trust her moving forward. I wanted to believe that she could be trusted behind the wheel of the car, out on dates, or with her friends, but that trust was a two-way street. She also had to trust that when I said no there was a good reason behind it, and there had to be a better way for her to communicate with me on difficult things instead of lying about them.

And I told her that no one can ever be trusted if they aren’t given opportunities to be trustworthy.

I explained that I wanted to take away some of the reasons she was feeling the need to lie. I recognized that I needed to give her some personal space and would back off on the barrage of questions and lectures if she promised to be a little more open and honest. I told her that I wanted to be there to teach and offer guidance, instead of punish and blame. I wanted to spend more quality time with her to build a better relationship and knew we both could make better decisions.

There was a halfway point, but we’d both have to stretch ourselves to get there.

Related: Parenting Teens Means Learning to Love Hard When They’re Hard to Love

Trusting your teen takes patience, grace, and time.

While I held her attention for a few more minutes, but knowing my window with her was closing, I told her the benefits of building trust with me far outweighed any one-off opportunity she may gain by lying. I told her I knew she was a good person with good judgment, and I believed in her with all my heart. I reminded her that the part of her teen brain that regulated decision-making was still developing, so things between us wouldn’t be perfect–but if we tried to be open, honest, and understanding, we could get through anything.

She nodded and didn’t say much, but my heart felt a little lighter. I’ve found out lately that so much of the suckiness in the teenage years is getting caught in a cycle, doing the same thing over and over again. Take away the friction, and oftentimes, you can move on.

There is nothing more difficult in these challenging teenage years than finding the balance of your kid, knowing there will be consequences for their actions while also keeping an open line of communication.

Trusting your teen is a common problem, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. For me, the goal is to ensure my daughters always know they can come to me—even if they might face a consequence for it afterwards.

Parenting teens and tweens is hard, but maybe this popular posts other parents found helpful will make it a little easier:

Teens Can Be Vicious With Their Words, Here’s How To Protect Your Mama Heart

8 Genius Responses For When Your Teen Is Being Lazy And Entitled

How To NOT Raise Entitled Teens

Are you in the thick of raising your tweens and teens? You may like this book by Whitney Fleming, the owner of Parenting Teens & Tweens: Loving Hard When They’re Hard to Love: Essays about Raising Teens in Today’s Complex, Chaotic World.