Part of fatherhood is determining whether one of my sons is telling the truth anytime he says that he’s too sick to attend school. The pandemic scrambled the way we think about such things and many parents tend to take any request for a sick day at face value. But all people, children especially, have a way of adapting to and taking advantage of new normals. One of my sons has seasonal allergies and could make an arguable case for being out much of the spring and fall.
I’m not one to interrogate and get to the bottom of scenarios when I think someone might be lying. I tend to take people at their word and figure they will suffer for their own untruths if told. Lies are rarely beneficial to anyone in the long run, they always catch up to the teller in some way. For example, if one gets a false sense of security in telling the first nine lies, the tenth is prone to do catastrophic damage.
While you can call someone a liar, they can redeem themselves at any time by stopping, so I wonder if there’s a point in calling them out. It is not an endemic condition, just a very bad habit we all have the ability to break, and never is a liar unaware of the truth.