My 8 year old boy's lack of self-confidence

[Pof2]

My husband and I have noticed that my eldest lacks self-confidence.

Outwardly and to many of his /our friends and family he appears very confident and cheeky as many children are his age. Yet we have noticed that he has started to lie, invent or embellish about achievements, friendships or things that he has done. Some of these are very subtle and have passed us by. But we have noticed that upon a little covert investigation and follow ups things are not what they seem.

For example...

The other day he came home from school very happy because he had come first on the school cross country.
We were naturally delighted and when we mentioned it to his teacher the following morning he seemed confused. He had not come first and there had not even been a cross country race!

I know this maybe about getting parental approval or to make us proud of him but there have been too many occasions of these things happening. We have told him that we love him and will always support him and it doesn't matter if he comes first or whatever as long as he experiences things and learns from them etc. yet the behaviour is not subsiding and keeps rumbling on.

He his beginning to give up a little too easy on things and gets annoyed when things don't happen the way we wants.

Does anyone have any ideas how to manage this?

[molly29]

Hi Pof2,
I will be watching this post carefully as i'm going through the same thing with my dd. I have wondered if its an age thing?Shes 7. I am reluctant to let the embellishments go because i don't want her to think that is ok,but is she getting confused between telling a white lie and a story?
Hope you get some helpful advice.x

[MrsMushroom]

My DD is also 8 and began to make things up about 2 months ago. They were very specific things...odd liittle tales of things which had happened (not!) but she would then laugh and admit them to be fibs.

It must be an age thing as Molly says.