“When a child is stuck in a lie, I find it effective to walk through how I would respond if she shared the truth. Let’s say you get a call from your daughter’s school notifying you that she didn’t do her writing homework for the past week. You get home and ask her about it, and she says over and over, “I did do it! I did! I don’t want to talk about it!” After an initial pause, when you feel you have a tiny opening, you might say: “Oh . . . okay . . . well, all I’m saying is that if a kid in this family did have a few days of not doing homework, I would really try to understand. Because every kid in this family, if they didn’t do homework, would have some reason for this. It makes me think about when I was seven and didn’t do writing homework for a bunch of days. Something about writing felt so tricky and it was so hard for me to work on it. Anyway, if it did happen, I’d sit with you and talk it out. You wouldn’t be in trouble . . .” Then play it cool. Don’t look at your child and say, “So you didn’t do it, right?” Just move on.”