6 Ways to Read Your Teenager’s Body Language

6 Ways to Read Your Teen's Body Language

Six Body Language Signals Which Say Your Child or Teenager May Be Lying  To You

 

You notice that your teens’ behavior has changed, at first you attribute it to hormones and pubertal growing pains . But the more you try to communicate with them you feel that something is wrong.

Even though you have repeatedly asked if they were taking drugs and received a firm “No” your suspicions won’t go away. Or, you may even suspect that your teen is still hanging around with that bad influence classmate even though they swore they don’t see them. Or is there a gnawing voice inside you telling you that your teen may be having sex even though they loudly insist that they are not.

First and foremost, if you have any suspicions that your child or teen is lying to you, trust your instincts because you are usually correct. Deep within your brain is something known as the limbic system which regulates the “fight” or “flight” mechanism and regulates your emotions- how you feel about something.  If you feel something is wrong or not as it should be, your brain will definitely let you know by sending a message to your autonomic nervous system, which will then take over. As a result you may experience a sick feeling in your stomach, your head pounding, your face getting red and hot, your breathing starting to get shallow, your heart racing, or even sudden sweating. Do not ignore these sudden changes in your body. They mean that your instincts are working. Trust them.

Here are 6 body language signals that you need to observe after you confront your child or teen, which may indicate they are lying.

1.  Stammering As soon as you confront them, they may immediately hesitate, or repeat words, phrases, say “uh, uh uh” or “um”  and or stammer over words. This is a major signal they may be lying.

2.  Lack of Eye or Face Contact  It doesn’t matter if they look up or down, to the left or to the right, if they suddenly look away right after you bring up your suspicions chances are they have something to hide. Usually if they look down it may indicate shame and embarrassment that you found out they weren’t telling the truth.

3.  Too Much Information In trying to explain themselves out of their lie, they may not only talk too much but give you too much detailed information that has nothing to do with the topic at hand. If you hear this, they are most likely lying to you.

4.  Fidgeting If they constantly move around, rock back and forth, wring their hands, play with their fingers, shake their legs, or tap their feet after you question them it may be an indicator they want to get away and not deal with telling you the truth.

5.  Skin Changes After confronting or questioning them, you may notice that they blush or turn pale or ashen colored. You may even notice them breaking out in a sweat particularly around their forehead, the bridge of their nose, or above their upper lip.

6.  Cotton Mouth  You may see that your child or teen swallows hard or swallows often or that their mouth seems dry when they speak. This is because they are feeling anxious and their autonomic nervous system has kicked in and their once moist mucous membranes have now become dry as they try to speak their lie.

These are only a few of the changes you may see to determine if your child or teen is lying to you. For more information check out Dr. Lillian Glass’ new book on Amazon or Barnes and Noble called The Body Language of Liars

Share

Comments

No comments yet. Why don’t you start the discussion?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *