Can autistic children lie?

I am also on the spectrum, and unfortunately where i grew up,i was basically taugt to lie, as for admitting to doing something wrong equaled punishment. If denied, i sometimes got away with it. However i do tend to be extremely obvious when lieing so mostly got caught out anyways, not to mention i highly dislike lies, but if the situation really leaves me without much other choice, i CAN lie, but tend to settle on half-truths rather than outright lies. Still makes me feel really bad about it though. I think what they mean by "cant lie" is the fact that we tend to be really bad at it(be way too obvious when trying)

I'm like others here in that it took me (and still does sometimes) a long while to get some kind of understanding of the concept of a 'white lie' but you're talking about 'black lies' presumably. I'm afraid it's your question that's wrong, and non-specific (more later) but any child under 8ish doesn't have the concept of 'right' and 'wrong' and can't sucessfully tell a lie anyway, I'm told.

I know that I can't deliberately tell a 'black' lie. I don't differentiate anyway, a 'lie' is a 'lie' whatever its' colour, but understand that people like you can, and do.

I think you've missed a subtle difference here between 'lies' and 'honesty'. We are all 'honest', sometimes excessively so, apparently. I can't see anything wrong with total honesty and truth myself, but I'm told that, by some strange process, people like you can be offended by it. It is highly unlikely that a 6yo ASD will deliberately tell a lie, but if they do I would look for the oppressive adults or circumstances around them that have made them feel it is necessary to, simply as self defence (Longman reply), which is the only logical explanation. Of course, the answer to any question depends on how it is phrased. Your question was very badly phrased, from our point of view. You don't specify the type of 'lie', and you don't give a hint as to why you're asking in order to give the context. This is honesty, not criticism, by the way.

Thank you for saying iyou feel ignorant - that's easy to cure with a little education and of course, totally forgiveable. After all, it's only by admitting our ignorance that we give others the chance to teach us

Lying is sometimes a defence. Consider if you are always being painted negatively and seeming different and in the wrong, some people might take to lying, however obvious, as protection against further negative feedback.

I think we are genrally not good at lying, we tend to give people too much gory, honest detail. Equally there are some people with autism who lie when it is obviously a lie and everybody else can see through the pretense. Some people with autism are incapable of lying but there are others who lie even when its pointless and obvious.

I don't think I lied much as a child. The "white lie" concept certainly took a while to understand. As a teenager I got a lot more secretive and would lie (badly!) about drinking and smoking etc. 

Don't lie much nowadays, mainly as I don't often have cause to, but also because trying to make sure every aspect of a story is correct causes a lot of stress. I worry that I will put my foot in it and be found out. 

There's a very big difference between mental ability across the spectrum. I'm on the autistic spectrum and I'm quite capable of lying. I expect many children, even autistic ones, are capable of lying when it suits- to deflect blame from themselves, for example. I would also expect though that many autistic children have a reputation for being truthful if they don't understand the concept of a secret or of social interactions where maybe they just didn't need to repeat something and so they haven't seen the point of lying, discretion, covering the truth, diplomatic answers etc.