My little four-year-old liar

Baby boy K is in preschool. He is honestly one of the most well-behaved children out there. At the last parent-teacher conference, Mrs. P told me he never gives her any trouble and is such a pleasure to teach. (Yes, I’m a proud momma.) But…

We have a lying problem on our hands. Apparently he did get in trouble at school one day. It wasn’t a big deal at all, but he got a time out. He reports on his behavior every day, and we thought something was going on when he said he didn’t want to talk about it. But later on, when my husband talked to him one on one, he promised he hadn’t gotten in trouble, and that was the “truth”. But it wasn’t.

The thing is, I have no idea why he doesn’t want us to know so badly. I can only guess that he just doesn’t want to disappoint us. But I really, really want him to feel like he can tell us anything!

To further complicate things, my husband doesn’t know yet that it was a lie. My mother-in-law spoke to the teacher when she dropped him off the next school day and the teacher told her about it. I (dumbly) promised her I wouldn’t tell DH before she would tell me what she found out. (She didn’t want DH to be mad at K for lying.) (And yes, I should have talked to the teacher directly myself.)

Now, I don’t know what to do. I talked to K, telling him that I knew that he had gotten a time-out at school, and that it was OK because everyone makes mistakes, but that he shouldn’t have lied about it, and that he should always tell us the truth. I haven’t told DH. He will probably find out about it at the next teacher’s conference. And I hate not telling him. But it’s been a week now. So who do I tick off, DH or MIL? Or just pretend to be surprised at the teacher conference?

K has been showing other signs of lying too, small white lies, (i.e. “yes, I ate all my beans”), to saying things like, “I’ll just tell daddy...” something that is not true. I don’t want to raise a pathological liar, and I feel guilty that K has not had any consequences for lying.

Does anyone have any ideas??


UPDATE:

About a week after the incident, Baby Boy K suddenly confessed that he had gotten a time out. We simply told him that it was OK but next time he needs to tell us when things like that happen. I guess he'll be alright after all. ;-)