Don't know how to deal with my 5 year old TELLING A SERIOUS LIE

[NottsMum]

DH and I have recently become aware of our 5 year old DD telling some porkies which when we have "found her out" have sat her down and explained that she should always tell the truth, otherwise people will stop believing her and if she want's something to be "real" then she just needs to tell us that, rather than fibbing.

However, last night, a friend of mine told me that my DD had told her some weeks ago that she used to have a 2 year old sister called Laura but she was in a hit and run accident and had died . DD has mentioned this to my friend on at least 3 occasions but one time she said that her "daddy was the driver who knocked over her sister"

DH and I cannot understand why she would tell such a story. She's apparently also told another mum at the school this story too, who believed her. I'm really shocked that my DD can come out with a story like this but I've no idea why she's done it. She's a very happy and normal 5 year old, she does have a 2 year old sister but she doesn't know anyone called Laura, or any 2 year old that died by being run over. I'm wondering whether she'd heard something on the news which is where she got the idea from.

I dont know how to deal with this. She's told 2 fairly fat lies in the last 3 weeks (one in which I rang the school to complain about because I completely believed what she told me!)

Clearly she has a very active imagination but could this be leading to something more serious unless we nip it in the bud now?

Any advice please mumsnetters as I'm quite worried .

[emmatom]

I would say not to worry. Part of being a 'normal' 5 year old is to do things which arn't 'normal'. Children of this age are still learning and experimenting with things around them and this sounds like she has a very good imagination which she may just be using to test peoples reactions.

I think you should just keep reiterating to her the importance of telling the truth and the consequences, like you have been doing, and maybe have a word with school about her current 'phase' and just wait for her to move on from it.

[Heathcliffscathy]

lots of kids have huge fantasies.

i wouldn't worry too much about it.

Most older siblings have unconscious fantasies about younger siblings dying or just going away and them being the only one again.

also the special sympathy she would get were something like this to happen.

keep talking to her about telling the truth. when she owns up to something (including a lie) praise her to high heavens.

and maybe give her some one on one time without her younger sis?

[Avalon]

Perhaps you could channel her imagination by getting her to tell you stories?
You could start her off with two or three things that she had to include in the story (if she needs it!) and then she makes the rest up.

Obviously, make the point that this is a story and we can say what we like in a story but it doesn't make it true.
Maybe she'll use up all her inventiveness this way and not then need to lie.

Anyway, just a thought.

[cupcakes]

She obviously has, as you say, a very active imagination. It doesn't seem as if she is trying to achieve anything with her lies, just that perhaps she enjoys the attention she gets when she tells an adult something incredible.
I once told friends that I had a penpal (I didn't) who had died of cancer (I was getting caught up in a lie and wanted to end it). I was 7 or 8. The attention it got me me for about 5 minutes was thrilling and I can see how that can be quite compelling for a child. I didn't make up anything else after that though as I was scared of being caught out and embarrassed by my peers at school.
Can't think of any advice on how to stop it but I can kind of understand (perhaps) why she does it.

[busybusymum]

my DD's friend has always made up whoppers. eg people & animals being killed in fires, visitors (some real people some not) coming to her house, parents off on grand holidays etc.

She is very plausible and includes looks of interesting and truthful facts, even decribes the smells etc.

She is now 12!

[noddyholder]

Either a v active imagination or a memory from a previous life if you believe in reincarnation which I do.

[Blu]

I wouldn't worry.
Like Sophable, i think children of this age live a big fantasy imaginitive life...DS certainly comes out with great dramatic sagas, as do a couple of his freinds. He came home with some particularly torrid tales when he first started reception - how he and another child had been brutally thumped by older boys, what had been said, a tear-jerking description of DS standing alone and afrid, crying. I think that they use thier imaginations to explore and extend snippets of real anxiety that they have - almost like excercise for thier emotions. TRying out the 'what if...' to see what it feels like, and if they can handle it. I can vividly remember doing it myself - I managed to burst into tears while teling my Mums neighbour that I had to have an operation and was frightened. The first my Mum knew of it was when her friend turned up with a lovely glove puppet 'to entertain me in hospital'!!

I went away to a conference for a few days. DS, then almost 4, spent the time I was away living 100% 'in role' as a small boy who had been found by the roadside as his mother had pushed him out of her car 'with only a small blanket'...and that "DS's name" had gone on holiday to Australia. He insisted that DP call him by his assumed name for the whole 3 days and wouldn't respond to his own name!

I don't think your dd is lying - i think she has a very stroing relationship with her imagnation, and that is no bad thing. As long as she has a strong RL relationship with right, wrong and being kind to people, she will be ok.

[GoingQuietlyMad]

I've no advice, but I also really worry about dd1s stories. She is only 3, but she is always making up completely fictional stories, but which sound plausible.

The harmless ones involve having had say a different lunch than the one she actually had. Eg DH comes home from work and will say "What did you have for lunch?". DD1 says "Spaghetti bolognese and yoghurt" when really it was salmon and potatoes???

I suppose I am not surprised when her imagination throws up something like "A lion jumped on me today", or "the fairies jumped down from the trees and helped the poorly children on the swings". But when it sounds like something that could be true, then it is worrying in case someone actually believes it!

Once she said "mummy bashed me with a frying pan" - I can assure you this was untrue, but I often wonder what her playschool make of it.

[ellesbells]

hi notts mum. my niece did the same at around that age too. she told me my sister had burnt her with an iron and all sorts of stories. we were once sitting in my car, waiting for my sister when a man pulled up beside us. she then showed me a nasty cut on her leg and said 'thats the man that run me over and hurt my leg and killed my friend madeline'(she never knew anyone called madeline.) we thought that maybe it could be an 'imaginary friend' at the time. perhaps this could be it in your DDs case? by the way, my niece is 13 now and mortified!!

[NottsMum]

You've all put my mind at rest that this is quite normal! I don't know any other children who've been caught telling such whoppers!

Aavalon - that's a really good idea, I'll definitely give that a go. I think she'll really enjoy telling us stories, last week she wrote her first "book" which we were really impressed by, so perhaps she could write some more!

Hopefully this will just be a short phase that she's going through. We'll speak to her tonight about her Laura story, and hopefully that'll be the end of that one at least.

[NottsMum]

Ellesbelles - just read your post. That's funny .

[Ponka]

I remember going through a phase of making relatively big porkies when I was a little bit older than this to get attention . I'm a relatively well rounded individual now (at least, I think I am). I think you can only do what you are doing and make sure that she has no underlying reasons why she would be seeking attention in this way.

Can I digress a little (sorry)? DS2 has been getting a lot of use out of a certain cosy yellow sleeping bag lately. It's lovely. He's nearly too big already though . Thanks.

[NottsMum]

Glad it's been of use Ponka!

[Flumpybumpy]

When I was 6 I told my teacher that my Mum had died, everyone believed me and spent ages sitting with me and comforting me. I got let of class and was the centre of attention for ages, In the meantime the headteacher phoned my home and my Mum answered. She told my Mum what I had said and faster than you could say LIAR I was whisked of to a child psychiatrist!!

I just want the attention, maybe it's the same for your DD.

FB x

[stleger]

My dd1 (now 13) was a terror for this. I had a conversation with a friend's mum - "I thought you had moved house. DD told me you had gone to live in Wexford." "No, we were in Paris on holiday. But my dd told me that my neighbour's MIL had died of a brain haemmorage while we were away, so I have just been at her house to sympathise - it wasn't true." Budding Lemmony Snicketts?

[geekgrrl]

when I was 5 I told everybody that I was actually adopted and made up an elaborate birth family... I think it was a mixture of attention-seeking and my imagination running wild. It did stop - I'm pretty sure that by the time I started school (at 6) I wasn't doing it anymore.

So, I wouldn't worry about it. Just another one of those phases...

[GoingQuietlyMad]

When I was five, I apparently made invitations and invited everyone in my class to an imaginary birthday party at my house.

My mum only found out when one of the mums said "Steven can't come to the party", to which mum said "What party??".

So I can see where we are headed with dd1.

[poppynic]

My mother has done heaps of childcare training and work and she says that young children are always telling whoppers about their day etc and that their parents are always so ready to believe them. When lots of it should just be taken with a grain of salt.

[GoingQuietlyMad]

i agree poppynic, i now take everything she says with a heavy pinch of salt.

[luanmac]

my dd is 5 and since she started primary 1 (scotland) she has told some very convincing stories, she came home on Monday with hw and I asked her where her reading book was, she said a little boy at her table had taken it and put it in his bag, I quizzed her about it, since she has been prone to fibbing lately, she was so sure and one of the other children at the table saw him take it, I was nearly going to phone the school, but I just put a note in for the teacher saying she didn't do her reading, no book, left it at that, I ot a message back the next day that they weren't getting reading books this week

I have to say I was very angry with her, gave her a hard time all the way home, I am still struggling with dealing with lies, I cannot quite get through to her how awful her behaviour was? sorry to go on! you are def not alone

[Prego]

Nottsmum - glad you are satisfied this can be 'normal' for 5 y.os. and NOT a presager for some dreadful condition!! My dd, now 7, told some really WHOPPERS a couple of years ago that bemused everyone, incl. various births and deaths that hadn't actually happened!!

To make a real fuss over it would be to attract a peice of unwarranted attention, and may even serve to perpetuate the behaviour...

Conversely, think of all the whoppers that we as adults tell from time to time, some witnessed by children??? ( or am I inappropriately self-disclosing!). Professional working with children hear them all the time and just pass it off as over-active imaginations.