ADHD Compulsive Lying

Many ADHD children have a hard time sitting still in class. Any noise in their environment will pull their attention immediately. Many times they act before they think and friends will sometimes start to distance themselves.

ADHD individuals are sometimes unable to use past experiences to judge future ones. 

These individuals struggle to fit in everywhere and so have very low self-esteem. Some start compulsive lying. They tell lies to their friends to make themselves feel more important. They lie to teachers and family to try and save themselves the humiliation of yet another argument. Everyone is angry…including the child. They do not understand the problem. They might not even understand they are not telling the truth. 

They aren't bad kids, indeed most are quite bright.  Teachers and parents think they’re lazy and just acting out; they start not to care and so there’s always trouble at home.  However, both the parents and teachers have failed to understand that this is not something they set out to do intentionally. They have an inability to use the executive function in their brain. That part that modulates behavior that helps them think about past experiences and how they will affect future ones. With this part of the brain not working, they are unable to inhibit poor behavior and poor decision making. 

They just don’t have the ability to use those parts of the brain that would help them function easier. For example, having a “sense of time” is an executive function such as the ability to know how long it takes for 2 hours to pass when your mother says, "Be home in 2 hours". An ADHD child is playing video games at a friend’s house. Before they know it, 3 hours have passed. They lack the ability to shift focus and activities, knowing when to quit playing and go back to work. For this reason they never stop to complete homework. But they never set out not to do the work. Other things just got in the way.

Behavioral issues stem from an inability to separate emotion from fact. It is hard to logically think when all that is top of mind is the emotional trigger from the heated encounter. Being able to step back and think out a peaceful solution rationally is difficult. So an ADHD child reacts first and thinks later.

For all these reasons and more, ADHD individuals have very low self-esteem. They believe they are broken. There's something wrong with their brain that sets them apart. They tend to push away those who are trying to help and can be very inflexible. These children find it very hard to explain their behavior because they can't visualize the future or even remember the past. Imagine rolling down a mountain road towards a cliff in a car with no brakes, being so consumed by the fact that there are no brakes that you neglect to note the upcoming cliff. For someone with ADHD, life is just about the few seconds of road. If all you had to consider were those few seconds, then lying about whether you finished your homework seems logical. Why spend those precious seconds in trouble?

So, what can we do for these children? We help give them tools to enhance brain function and give them control. We work on all the issues keeping them from being able to live their lives productively. We improve auditory and visual processing skills to help their brain interpret better what they see and hear as well as eliminating distractibility. We help the brain and body to work together to coordination, balance, organizational and sequential skills. We help them to improve function in the frontal lobes to help those executive functions, depression and improve self-esteem.

For more information contact BrainAdvantage today.