Here are some smart ways caregivers can handle situations that involve untruthful behavior:
Approach the issue with empathy. Don’t accuse the person of lying or be antagonistic toward them because these tactics are likely to backfire. Instead, sit down and gently ask about challenges your loved one may be facing with their diet or medication protocol, their safety or other issues. “Avoid being too domineering,” Grossberg says. “Have a discussion and keep in mind the importance of their maintaining control.” For your own peace of mind, it can help to remind yourself that the person may not be telling the truth for a good reason — to protect themselves.
In some instances, it can help to say, “I don’t feel like you’re being honest with me,” then describe the behavior you’re seeing, suggests Candace S. Brown, an associate professor of gerontology at the University of North Carolina Charlotte. For example, maybe your loved one is insisting they’re eating regularly, but the fridge is still filled with the food you brought over days ago. “Sometimes we think older adults are lying and they just forget,” Brown says.
Brainstorm solutions. Talk to your loved one about their concerns and challenges, and explore ways to help them address the issue at hand. Not long ago, Dr. Grossberg saw an older woman who had depression and high blood pressure; her adult daughter was upset because the woman hadn’t taken her diuretic that morning, though she said she had. With some gentle probing, he discovered the mother was worried about having to go to the bathroom or having an accident when she came to the doctor’s office. They came up with a workaround for situations like this, so that the woman could delay that dosage until after an appointment. The goal, he says, “is to find a way to give control back to them.”
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“There’s no perfect solution to every scenario,” Grossberg adds. “It takes creativity and ingenuity, and open and honest conversation.”
Ask to attend doctors’ visits with them. “Convince your parent to allow you to be there to help them share their story with the doctor so the doctor is in a position to offer the best care,” Jacobs suggests. That way, you can add details and your own observations to what they tell the doctor during the visit. “It’s a matter of being vigilant in observing how a parent is aging but not jumping in too quickly to take over,” says Jacobs.
While caring for her father, who passed away in 2025 at age 82, Suzanne Horton found that communicating with his doctors helped her deal with his being untruthful about whether he had taken his medication, whether he had fallen, or how he was feeling physically. Sometimes she shared the information privately with the provider. “Other times, during appointments, I would frame things gently by saying, ‘I thought’ or ‘I counted’ rather than directly contradicting him,” says Horton, a mental health counselor in Tacoma, Washington. “In some situations, I would simply nod or shake my head during the conversation so the provider understood what I was seeing without embarrassing my dad.” Then, she’d let the doctor take the lead in addressing the issue.