Compulsive Lieing in our 7 year old

My fiancee and I have a 7 year old son who is currently being treated for bipolar with hyperactivity. Over the last year or so we have come to realize that our son is lieing more and more. He will lie about ANYTHING, even if he is not getting in trouble. He will even lie if his mother and I were sitting RIGHT in front of him watching him do what we told him not to do. For instance: He has a real problem with picking his nose. We dont yell at him for doing this, we just tell him to stop, go wash his hands and get a tissue and remind him that picking his nose is gross and that thats what tissues are for. If we are sitting right there together and we are watching him pick his nose, as soon as we tell him to stop and go wash his hands he sits there and denies doing it. We have tried to tell him many many many times that if you just tell the truth, you wont be in as much trouble. We have even gone to the extent as to completely letting him off of punishment simply because they told the truth (ex. for this:our 4 year old took a permanent marker and colored all over the back of our house, at first she denied doing it, but it was obvious it was her because of the difference in writing, after we reminded her that if she just told us the truth that she would be ok, she admitted to writing on the house and the only thing she had to do was help her mother clean it off), we took him to the Dr for a med check and his dr asked him if he had (and in the words of the dr) " been hearing voices from people that werent really there", after being asked this our son told the Dr that he had been, but he shows no obvious signs of any A/V hallucinations and when we took him out to dinner with his grandmother and my wife was telling her about what our son had said about the hallucinatons, his grandmother then asked him and he reapeated what the Dr said. " I hear voices from people who arent really there". Is this behavior normal or is there a problem that we need to confront?

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

It would not be reasonable to regard the behavior as normal, but it is not a cause for serious worry. Deal with it behaviorally, by giving him a time out (10 minutes will suffice) whenevr he does it. Some children lie reflexively from the motivation to 'keep out of trouble'. As you've told your son, in reality the behavior only exacerbates problems. He will learn as time goes on.