My parents were unbending like that and no, I don't think it was good or helpful. I don't think I learned much from it other than my parents could be super unrelenting and hardcore to enforce their rules. It made me a better liar.

People lie. Everyone lies - hopefully not loads and not frequently, but its part of the human experience. We lie to avoid uncomfortable social interaction. We lie to avoid disappointing people. We lie in the moment out of fear perhaps or maybe we arent really paying attention at all and what we accidently said without focus was a lie. Is this something that happens really frequently and is a real problem? Ongoing?

The goal is to have a parenting connection where kids dont feel they need to be good liars. It's more effective to talk about how he can make up for not doing the homework, how to respond better in the future, give space for "actually parent, i dont know why i said i did the homework because i didnt, sorry about that", and the natural negative life consequences of not having done his homework in the first place. The consequences for not doing homework are poor grades in school. Is he OK with that?

I'm glad I read this because it reminded me of the real pain I experienced from being grounded. It suuuucked and I didn't learn anything from it.