When kids lie - Parenting Question

I'm a stepmom of two boys ages 10 and 4. My husband is amazing; he's very involved and an advocate of involved parenting. We subscribed early on to the philosophy that I needed to be a hands-on parent since we intended to have children and raising the boys without both of us being able to parent equally didn't make sense with our parenting style. We also have an open exchange with their mom about issues/discipline/praise.

There's the lead up. I'm hoping there are other parents & step parents out there who have similar set ups and experience with child-rearing - or people with lots of child rearing experience that can weigh in and give us some good ideas moving forward.

We're having an on-going issue with the 4-year-old lying. He lies constantly about things of very little consequence. For example: This morning he lied to me about who helped him learn to tie his shoes. It doesn't matter who taught him but when I asked when he learned to tie them, he insisted that he taught himself - then he adds "or" so and so taught him and then "or" so and so - until he's listed all plausible people that he could have come into contact with (including myself). That's what I mean by no consequence lies, there is no pay-off to lying because it's an every day question, not an accusation. Our excitement about him learning a new skill becomes another conversation about lying.

This is happening multiple times a day. He understands right and wrong and he understands the difference between the truth and lies. We have to let many of them go because of the sheer volume of lies that come our way. My concern is that he's a multiple home child. If he tells us a babysitter isn't feeding him, we need to trust him. If he tells us someone gave him the new toy he brought home, we need to trust him. If he tells us that something bad has happened in any of the numerous places he goes (school, babysitter, home, grandparents) we need to be able to believe him. That being said, accusations of molestation or abuse can completely ruin an adults life in the US and it's not something that can be done lightly. This hypothetical has me very anxious and my stomach is in knots.

(This issue of trust is not unique to multiple home children but it's compounded with MHC).

This is obviously worst-case scenario but this is where my poor brain goes while we're spending hours working with him and getting no where. I should add that he gets so worked up when we ask him about lying that he nearly makes himself sick. He gets multiple opportunities to tell the truth, we don't yell, we give him pauses to think about what he wants to say and instead of just telling the truth, he makes up more lies on the fly to cover the existing lies and FREAKS OUT when called out. The scale of his reaction isn't on-par with the situation and he's non-responsive to basic parenting tricks and discipline. He sticks to his lie regardless.

I have no idea what to do next. Any advice?