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You have just seen the real marks: at a parent–teacher meeting, on the school app, or in a coaching message. They are not what your child told you. Feeling hurt is normal. The next conversation decides whether the next bad mark reaches you from your child or from someone else.
Why do children lie about marks?
Most children who hide marks care about them. They are scared of what the number will set off at home. The common reasons:
Fear of the reaction: shouting, comparisons with a cousin, the phone taken away, or a parent’s visible disappointment.
Shame: they told you the test went well, and correcting it now feels worse than staying quiet.
Buying time: they plan to “fix it” in the next test and tell you then.
The pressure is real. NCERT’s Mental Health and Well-being of School Students survey covered 3,79,013 students between January and March 2022. Anxiety about studies, examinations and results was among the feelings students reported most, and it rose from the middle to the secondary stage. To manage their feelings, students said they turned to friends first and parents second.
Does punishing a lie make children more honest?
The research points the other way. Victoria Talwar and Kang Lee compared 84 children aged 3 and 4 from a punitive and a non-punitive school in West Africa. Most punitive-school children who peeked at a forbidden toy lied about it, significantly fewer non-punitive-school children did, and the punitive-school liars held their story better under follow-up questions (Child Development, 2011).
A later study of 372 children aged 4 to 8 found that telling a child the adult would be happy to hear the truth made truth-telling more likely (Talwar, Arruda and Yachison, 2015). An appeal to the child’s own standards worked better when no punishment was expected. Older children in that study were more likely to lie and to keep the lie going.
These were young children in lab tasks, so take them as a direction, not a rule. Research on teenagers points the same way. In a study of 1,186 14-year-olds in Sweden, children’s own spontaneous disclosure explained more of the link between parents’ knowledge and good adjustment than parents’ tracking and surveillance did, and feeling controlled was linked to poorer adjustment (Kerr and Stattin, 2000).
What should you say when you find out?
Wait until you are calm, even if that means tomorrow. Talk in private, not at the dinner table; here is how to discuss report cards when siblings are present. Then use four steps.
State what you know, without a trap. “I saw your maths marks on the school app. It says 38, not 72. I’m not going to shout. I want to understand.”
Ask about the fear, not the lie. “What did you think would happen if you told me?” Listen to the whole answer. Don’t argue with it yet.
Name the line, once. “The mark doesn’t make me angry. Hiding it worries me, because I can’t help with something I don’t know about.”
Make a deal for next time. “If a test goes badly, tell me within a day. The first thing I’ll say is ‘Thanks for telling me’, and we’ll talk about the plan the next day, not that night.”
If there is a consequence, tie it to the hiding, not the mark, and keep it small and short: for example, you check the school app together each week for a month.
How do you rebuild trust after a lie about marks?
Trust comes back through small, repeated, honest reports. A plan for the next month:
Week one: read the paper together. Sort every lost mark into “didn’t know it”, “knew it but slipped” or “ran out of time”. A scary number becomes a list of fixable things.
Week two: one short weekly check-in. Same day each week; you ask what went well first.
Week three: let them report first. Your child tells you a mark before the app or the teacher does. Thank them before you discuss it.
Week four: step back. If the reports have been honest, drop the joint app checks and keep the weekly talk.
If the marks are low because of real gaps, deal with those directly. Fermi’s AI tutor can work out what your child already knows and build a plan for the session, so the “didn’t know it” list from week one turns into a clear next step. Older students whose coaching centre sends marks home can send their own note to parents first.
When is it more than marks?
Lying about marks is usually a fear problem that a calmer home can fix. Talk to the school counsellor or a doctor if you also see lasting changes in sleep, eating or mood, withdrawal from friends, talk of hopelessness, or if the hiding continues even after you have changed your response. The government’s free Tele MANAS mental-health helpline answers on 14416 or 1-800-891-4416.
