DD got tearful on the way home from childminder yesterday and when I asked her why she said she was sad about a toy that got broken. Further probing about this led to the following tale (she is very verbally fluent so this is almost verbatim minus my occasional question)
"The shaker maker (rattle) got broken, it broke in half. It was purple. There was a purple one and a blue one and they broke. There was a butterfly inside that made it shake. they broke in half and the butterfly came out on the floor. In the toy room with the hard floor. I hit them and they got broken."
Now she was tearful all the way home expressing remorse for the broken toy, and then related the tale to her father when we got home and again while trying to settle her to sleep (she was unusually unsettled). I asked the childminder about it today and none of this happened . They don't even have a rattle or maracas that fits this description. Childminder is lovely, DD was happy to go there today, no problems there.
I don't think she is lying, she has no concept of deliberate falsehood, when she has spilt drinks or broken things for real she immediately comes and tells us, I think it is more imagination. She has very vivid dreams and plays little people games with different voices for each character etc. She has recently started copying speech patterns she hears so when me or DH talk about what we did when we were children she says something like "when daddy was little I was a farmer and looked after sheep" which she obviously didn't but she is joining in with the style of conversation. I am just gobsmacked that she could invent such an elaborate story and get emotional about it.
Is this normal? Should I have a word with her about telling lies or is this just a facet of imaginative play? How do you begin to tell a 2yr 3mo old about the difference between dreams/imagining and real life?
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Behaviour/development
2 year old making up stories
6 replies
MamaLaMoo · 16/02/2011 13:51
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