When we’d recently adopted the girls their psychiatrist asked me, “Do they lie?” I thought for a second and answered, “No, not really.” No incredible instances came to mind. “No big problems with lying?” he followed-up. I shook my head. He responded, “Hum…most of these kids do.” He looked at me, paused, and then said, “You’ve done nothing less than save these two girls lives.” His words were meaningful. We were hopeful. That was the plan. He moved away to another state. I can’t tell you now how many times I’ve wanted to hunt him down and tell him, “They lie!”

Elementary school was manageable. There was the issue with Haley steeling candy from the reward jar at school. She adamantly claimed someone put it in her backpack. Then there was the calculator that belonged to the school that Haley said was hers. It had the school’s name written on the back of it like the others but had been traced over with a different color marker. She said she’d written the letters on it so hers would be like the others. I couldn’t find her calculator to prove one way or the other. The teacher was sure it was one from her stock. Haley was convincing and stuck to her story. We all agreed either she believed it was hers, or she was an incredible liar. Aleya had a few friend issues where stories got twisted and parents got involved. We weren’t too concerned as it was the age to expect girl drama.

Middle school is when the girls secret lives began, though we didn’t know the extent of it. Aleya got in trouble at school and the lies started. That’s the first time we saw a cold, calculated effort which was not Aleya’s nature. By 8th grade, they’d both honed their skills to a degree that lying was their go-to solution with little to no remorse. Getting away with what they wanted was their primary interest. Honesty, trust and respect were lost concepts. The conversations, discipline, and consequences resulted in absolutely no behavior change. They tolerated the conversations, road out the discipline, and left home when the consequence limited them.

Distance brought sadness but also bought back sanity into our lives. It was impossible to parent well, day after day, when you get nothing but lies. I find myself wanting to give so many examples. I type one and then another and deleted them. Though we had to live through it all and own the experiences too, I don’t want to share too much on the girls. They have their stories as well. We weren’t perfect parents. We didn’t have perfect parents. Sometimes we did it right, appreciated or not. Sometimes we did it wrong and made things worse. Sometimes we wondered if there was really any right move. Even with what we had to give, we were severely unequipped.

It was like we had our own miserable reality TV show: Loving Little Liars. I have tried to understand it. For one, lying worked a lot of the time. It became their first go-to, crafted problem solver. And when caught, just lied more, and if that didn’t work, they twisted the focus. We know most of what Aleya did because of Haley tossing out stop-in-our-tracks info on Aleya when Haley was out of ways to escape. Aleya’s done the same. Also, for them, risk is more thrilling than it is scary. Getting in trouble is only a possibility in their minds. Todd and I were/are parents with expectations and house rules. The girls at twelve wanted the lives of an 18-year-old. Lying and sneaking worked for them a lot. Then when they finally got near 18, it had caught up with them and had exhausted us.

We’ve gone over in our minds a lot that we would have done differently only to realize that we really tried hard. Would we make some changes and do it better if doing it all over again? Yes! We’ve learned a great deal. Would it have made a great deal of difference? Who knows? We are the parents, and that role wouldn’t change. I still get lied to. The girls don’t want to disappoint us. They’d rather lie than tell us the truth still if it is going to disappoint us or put them in a bad light. It makes loving them hard, but we still love them!

Truth: Lying is everywhere. No one is innocent of it. Healthy relationships though aren’t built on lies—that’s the most unfortunate part.