lies online

[sfranc01]

My son is 16 and has Asperger's. He is doing very well in most areas. He chats quite a bit online and I monitor those chats periodically.

The last couple of years I have noticed that he has been lying to friends online. For example, he is a good swimmer, but online he makes it sound like he swims with Michael Phelps. Another example was last night he was commiserating with a friend whose dad was out of town for a long time. He told her that he knew how hard that was because his dad had to be gone for year with the Navy once. His dad was in the Navy before he was born!

I have spoken with some parents who say their kids also make things up online. Is this something I should be concerned about?

[Mike Bradley]

Dear Parent,
That kind of lying is common among many teens, but particularly with Asperger's kids. Both sets of kids lie like that to gain acceptance, approval, and connections with other kids. Asperger's kids often do more of this in an attempt to compensate for their inability to relate well to peers. Most grow out of this as they learn that the lying only makes things worse.
Sit down with him and address the lying, but frame it as you would some other non-ethically based behavior like not organizing his homework well. Do this so that you remove the shame/character flaw implications from the discussion. Calmly tell him that lots of boys like him make things up, thinking that it will help them get and hold friends. Then ask him how he would feel about someone who lied to him. Help him see that the lying would make him always wonder if the friend was being truthful or not, and would cause him to shy away from that friend not because he disliked him, but because he just couldn't know when to rely on what the friend was saying.
Replay those incidents you mentioned with him, asking him to predict how things would have gone had he simply been himself and told the truth. Point out that being a good listener and being compassionate with that girl was all that was needed to make her like him. Let him see that his lying would pointlessly endanger that friendship.
Please let us know how this turns out.