When Your Kid Blames Everyone Else

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The other day, a friend of mine texted asking for parenting advice. She said:

So Isabella was a blatant asshole to a soccer teammate yesterday. Her coach called me. There’s a girl on her team, Sadie, who doesn’t go to their school, and she came over to sit with Isabella and her buds, and Isabelle said something to the effect of “you’re not in our crew” and made the girl cry. Obviously I will talk to her about how this would make her feel, etc etc, but Isabella is FAMOUS for either lying or explaining away her crimes. It’ll be a denial or “But Sadie said X, Y and Z before.” The root issue is her inability to own her mistakes. She is FAMOUS for either lying or explaining away her crimes. What do I do?

Okay, first I just want to say: This is totally normal kid behavior. Hell, it’s totally normal adult behavior. Who hasn’t lied or tried to deflect blame to avoid negative consequences? When my kids do stuff like this, I always find it helpful to take a step back and consider the root cause. Your child isn’t trying to be a jerk; she knows she’s done something wrong, she’s scared of the consequences, and she doesn’t have a lot of impulse control. It’s the asshole kid trifecta.

In these kinds of situations, kids may also feel like we have no idea what the broader context is. And let’s face it, the context matters. Maybe Sadie did say mean stuff to Isabella a few days earlier and didn’t get into trouble; if so, the injustice of it all! No wonder Isabella is getting defensive.

So what should this parent do next? Of course, there’s no one right answer, but here are my suggestions.