Stepsons extreme behaviour & lying 😔

My stepson, 10, has started lying a lot recently, and it’s getting a bit much. I can let little bends of the truth slide somewhat and if it was only every so often then it wouldn’t be a big deal, but lately he’s just been constantly lying about the most silly little things, and he’s also just not listening to basic requests or pretending not to hear etc which has just made it all worse. Today it all came to a head, and I’m not proud of how I handled the situation- especially because it’s so damn silly and petty- but it’s just been so much of it lately that I snapped.

I’ve been real ill with flu all week but the kids are on a school holiday at the moment and their dad is working, so I’ve been determined to just suck it up and get on with it to give them a fun week off, whilst also trying to keep the house relatively tidy-ish etc. I’ve had a busy day today- I had to go take my dad to buy a new car, so on the way home I stopped at a restaurant we all love and got everyone’s favourite meal to take home for lunch, then I called into a toy shop and got my stepson and son a new plushie of their favourite Pokemon that they’d been talking about, then when I got home my mum said they’d been well behaved for her so my stepson and I made ice lollies, I took both kids to the park, and then when we got home again I tidied up & vacuumed downstairs so they could tip all of their Lego on the floor in the lounge. At this point, I was absolutely exhausted and took the opportunity to make some coffee and catch up on some emails while they played. Cool.

So. My youngest son had a sheet of stickers with a magazine and had left the empty sheet on the lounge coffee table this morning. My stepson picked it up while I was in the kitchen and started tearing off the backing paper that was left on the sheet (yknow like from around the stickers) in tiny pieces and sticking them to the floor. When I saw this I asked him stop, and said that the last time he did that I was finding tiny bits of paper stuck all over the house for days. He started to peel it off as one piece instead of tearing it up, so I said “stop it babe, honestly it just gets stuck to everything, just leave it alone please”, and he looked at me, peeled it off some more, and said “no I want to, I’ll put it in the bin”. At this point there was already about 15 tiny bits of sticky paper over the floor, so I said pointed this out and again said that he needed to stop. He looked at me again, said “nah, I want it” and peeled it off some more. I just took it out of his hands and went to throw it in the bin, and he started screaming at me saying “what the hell is wrong with you, I was playing with that” so I said that I’d asked him to stop and had told him why I’d wanted him to, and explained that when he didn’t listen I just took away the opportunity for him to keep doing it.

He absolutely flipped out, and started screaming louder that he wasn’t peeling it off at all, he was trying to stick it back down so he could put it in the bin. My husband had come home just as this started playing out and so we’d both seen what he was doing with the stickers, so he stepped in at this point and tried to sort of laugh it all off like “c’mon mate, we watched you peel it off ya little loon. It’s done now anyways, no biggie” but 10 just got worse and carried on screaming that I was lying and he was telling the truth. I always do my absolute best to not shout at these boys but hearing him call me a liar like that just made me see red. I yelled at him that lying about something so silly and making this much of a fuss about it, when we all know exactly what happened, is ridiculous. I left the room to take a breath and calm down, but he followed me, still shouting that I am a liar, that he wasn’t doing anything wrong, and that I’m the one making a big deal out of nothing. We argued back and forth for about 15 seconds and I said he needed to just leave and take a minute in his room because I didn’t want to yell, but it was impossible for me to take a moment to calm down whilst trying to ignore him stomping and screaming. He wouldn’t leave, stood in the doorway, and kept screaming that I was lying and that I’m to blame for him acting like this. His dad had to literally pick him up and move him out of the doorway so I could remove myself from the situation.

He went to his room and for about 15 minutes was still constantly yelling that I am the worst etc. Once he’d calmed down a little his dad went to talk to him and said that this behaviour is not at all acceptable, and told him that while we do understand that it’s difficult to tell the truth sometimes, especially if we’ve been caught out doing something wrong etc, there’s a lot more respect to be had for someone who can admit to their mistakes and take responsibility, and he just said that he doesn’t care because he’s telling the truth, but even if he did carry on doing the thing with the stickers then it doesn’t matter anyways because he’d already started doing it before I asked him to stop. Right.

Uuuh the issue with the stickers is so pathetic I know, but it’s just led to a much deeper problem that’s been bubbling under the surface for a couple of weeks now. It’s not the actual initial behaviour that had bothered me but rather the relentless & aggressive behaviour that followed.

Is this just a phase kids go through? What can we do to try and prevent this happening again? I know I can’t stop him lying as such, but I also don’t want him growing up thinking he can just ignore people and then get away with turning the situation around to suit his narrative. I’ve heard him telling little obvious fibs whilst taking to some of his school friends on Minecraft, and you can just hear that they’re bored of it so he must be behaving this way at school too.

Ugh 😒