9 year old lying finally told truth

I had a sibling like this too. You need to punish her for lying, otherwise she'll think there's no consequences. Then she'll think twice about lying again.

I think the OP has heard enough of the armchair psychology.
What the OP needs is support, and encouragement to fight for herself and her son in this.
Her daughter's behaviour is of the gravity whereupon sticker charts and passive assurance will do diddly. Her daughter needs skilled intervention, and quickly.

So you think children should behave like this and not be made to understand the severity of the impact of their behaviour? That's a way to create an adult who thinks the world revolves around them and they can hurt people with no consequences.

I am advocating for nothing but the truth. The potential consequences were dire.

Well of course. That won't make her grow up into a messed up adult with insecurities and riddled with anxiety afterall.

I hate the way neurodiversity is always trotted out as some kind of theory/excuse on this site. I'm neurodivergent myself.

We don't actually know if this child is or isn't, she hasn't been assessed.

But it is possible for someone to be neurodivergent and also an attention seeker, a liar, a not very nice person. It's insulting to those of us with these conditions to always attribute these behaviours to neurodiversity.

Regardless of what is causing this, she could have ruined OP's life, and that of OP's son.

We all have to live in society- I myself feel the burden of trying to fit into a world where I don't feel I quite fit. But we cannot go around hurting other people in this way. It's simply insulting to say neurodivergent people do not understand emotions or the impact of their actions. We are not all the same. This child is being given far too much benefit of the doubt. Neurodivergent or not - she needs to learn, and fast.

You sound like an amazing Mum. Raising children alone is not easy, and raising two children, one with suspected Autism and another with ADHD and Dyspraxia on your own must be so challenging.
Hats off to you. 💐
Your dd is so in need of specialist help. Hurting her brother physically is not on.
You say you are on your own because of domestic violence. What did she witness ?
Is her acting up because of trauma ?

This is incredibly serious and you must prioritise a diagnosis, before it gets worse (and, without intervention, it WILL get worse). Given you have social services involvement, get them to absolutely harangue health services to seriously speed up the assessment. Your daughter needs skilled intervention, and you need proper support (and not the type of 'support' you're getting at the moment, whereby you feel the need to just take this relentless/damaging onslaught on the chin).

Neither you nor your son's emotional wellbeing are incidental in this. You both have as much right to a worry free life as your daughter. Her behaviour would have broken me, so kudos to you on your resilience!

Hugs. All I would say is be very careful with your own wording when trying to rationalize with her after the event. Telling her that you could be arrested and your little boy could end up with no mummy is an incredibly large burden to be placing on an already deeply troubled 9 year old mind.

This 100%

she sounds very dangerous and whilst I feel really sorry for you OP and you do sound lovely… you need to toughen up with her and deal with this as her parent not her friend!

I think she is attention seeking. Some children just seem need more adult attention and making up massive lies is one way to do this. That is why she's fine at home with you and is confident singing and dancing so the attention is on her.

One way to deal with her hurting your ds is to ignore her when she does something to him and completely give your ds lots of attention to make him feel better.

Actually she may do fine as an adult as she has the skills of an influencer or minor celeb. The important thing is she gets the attention not for bad stuff

@wowokay Please note I never mentioned lack of empathy or emotions. Theory of mind and autism is extremely complex, contested and often misunderstood debate. Some authors say it’s a false explanation (eg Gernsbacher et al Failures of the Claim That Autistic People Lack a Theory of Mind. Arch Sci Psychol. 2019;7(1):102-118). Others continue to support it whilst acknowledging its heterogeneous range of symptoms (eg Rosello et al Theory of Mind Profiles in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Adaptive/Social Skills and Pragmatic Competence. Front Psychol. 2020 Sep 17;11:56).

Even if many researchers do not know what theory of mind is or agree on a definition, what is evident is how autism results in many struggles with information processing and social communication including interpreting social and emotional cues in others. In this way, ToM is useful shorthand for explaining that autistic children (NAACALT) may not understand consequences with an impaired ability to attribute mental states to others, making it harder to explain and predict behavior ie them not understanding why you being grabbed is not acceptable.

In any event, I still very much stand by the advice for anyone to tell an autistic child that ‘mummy may go to jail’ because of the child’s lies is harmful. There are, other, more supportive and helpful approaches.

My child is awaiting assessment under CAMHS for ASD and ADHD. Last year she told her teacher 'mummy smacks me for punishment'!!! Which I don't at all! Not ever! Luckily, the teacher just said 'we've got to tell you that she said it' and that was all. I assume they've recorded that somewhere though! Luckily, she had also accused staff at the school of various things, so I think they must know that what she said wasn't true. I was very upset and scared that she'd make up more lies and I actually really yelled at her, tells her that if she lies about things like that that she might get taken away and made to live with strangers... then I was really scared she'd tell school I said that, so it was all just very stressful!!!!! My youngest who is 2 often says things that aren't true, like if someone says she can't have something she'll say 'xxxx just bit me!'. So I dread to think what she might say, when she starts preschool!!

@AriannasGuitarCase My DD has autism but I would not tolerate this behaviour at all.

I do agree entirely. It's not ok to lie! You have my every sympathy OP and I hope that whatever has caused this, a need for attention or whatever, is soon resolved.

For most Autistic people, and especially children, home is our safe space. It seems to me that your dd is trying to hold it together at school (which is generally a very stressful place for Autistic kids) and she's struggling to process her feelings while there. Because home is safe, she feels able to make up home scenarios that would cause her to feel the same way, but she's unable to see the consequences of doing so. She feels out of control at school and is desperately trying to hide that, hence the dominance/control comments, it's just another form of masking how she feels

As usual on MN, there's lots of comments from PP who ignore the Autism and give advice based on NT kids. That's why I think finding a Child Pyschologist who is trained in ND is important and could really help your dd work through her feelings

I'd also consider moving schools, but only if your dd agrees. I hated my first primary school and felt very afraid there... it took me over 6 months to agree to moving but I did when I was 8, and it was a fresh start that made the last few years of primary easier for me

I mean the girl said ‘I’m the dominant one’. This is a very serious and very dangerous power imbalance. My kid would get the a very serious talking to and consequences follow up.

@Mummyoflittledragon agree conpletely. I would be extremely angry with a child who could have lied her way into care. Whatever her reasoning. She sounds like she gets far too much attention for negative behaviours and is on serious danger of blowing your lives up. I’m so sorry OP I would be extremely traumatised by this too.

This may be an unpopular opinion but there would have been very serious consequences if my child had told such horrific lies about me or anyone else. They certainly wouldn't be getting compassion and understanding from me.

Not telling kids off for these sorts of things gives the green light to continue doing it.

My son is autistic but frequently said things like ‘you are hurting me’ and the response was concern. He can’t distinguish at times between fiction and non fiction and it’s a million times worse when it’s based on fiction eg titanic

he told his school I had beaten him up with a huge stick - he was put on child in need- no marks and he had been reading a non fiction story when someone was hit with sticks. The lovely social worker came to see him numerous times and saw and witness numerous things where he just said ‘I see where this has come from’ on one occasion we were going out the front door with the social worker and the guy accidentally stood on my son’s foot as he suddenly stopped - my son he turned around and said ‘you’ve just stamped on my foot and crippled me’ 😱🤦‍♀️with my son it is literal meaning, word issues and confusing reality and not being able to read intention etc

we’ve done a lot of work with him about what you can and can’t say eg someone says they don’t want to play with you - you don’t go round saying they are your enemy and that they have said they will never speak to you again etc

for me I ignored the things he told about me and just corrected the narrative. He’s much much better now but we still do techniques.

for instance he will take things literally eg the social worker made him a worry house and told him to put stuff in and he told him he wanted to put in the time mummy took all his stuffed toys and binned them - this must of been a dream as the social worker saw the hundreds on his bed etc

there is a power dynamic and this is where you need help ……

You need a faster diagnosis, go private if you can. This will mean more help at school. I agree with PPs that she needs to see a child psychologist, particularly because of the dominance comment and the possible impact of the dv.

But you also said:

""I have never punished her for lying about me and I still kiss/cuddle her tell her I love her everyday" – to me this is like extra positive reinforcement for lying. Tell awful lies, get more lovely cuddles & attention"

Withholding love as a form of punishment is never OK, but it can be catastrophic for a ND child. They're not getting cuddled because they lie, it's just that affection isn't being withheld.

You also mentioned on another post that they should be told that their mummy could be taken away, they'll be orphaned etc.

While a ND child needs to understand actions have consequences, sometimes things are beyond their scope of understanding. Theory of mind is absolutely a thing, it's not a myth. Of course many ND children grow out of it, but it can have an impact on processing and understanding especially in a younger child.

If my DS - who probably has a mental age of around 8 or 9 - was told that he was going to not have a mummy any more because of something he did, he'd be completely traumatised and that wouldn't go away. He is still traumatised from certain throwaway comments made by the school when he was 5 (he's now 14). There's no "gentle" way to tell a ND child this and there's the risk of just increasing the overall anxiety - which in turn could exacerbate the problems.

I completely agree there's no blanket approach, and not all autistic children are the same. However, there are elements of your post which reek of ABA theory which you say you don't like, but you're describing making an autistic child "pass" in an NT world rather than really understanding what's going on or what the need is. Also the use of the phrase "high-functioning" - not something that's supposed to be used any more as it's misleading...

Of course it's not about indulging a child's unhealthy or inappropriate behaviour, that's not acceptable either. But there are alternatives to just scaring the child, especially at just 9 years old.

Positive reinforcement for desirable behaviours is a much better approach than punishment, or punitive measures for unwanted behaviours. It's fine to talk about undesirable behaviours and what's OK, but by talking about far-reaching consequences that a child doesn't have capacity to fully process, you're risking doing far more damage as they'll hold onto that thought. And very often, they'll hold onto the negative element of the thought in isolation - "I'm going to lose my mummy" without relating it to the action that caused it. What that means is you get a child who's extremely anxious that they could randomly lose their mummy at any given moment. It doesn't matter how gently or carefully you explain it, there's a real and genuine risk that all they'll remember is the negative consequence without fully comprehending why this is the case.

I’d be worried about the effects on your son so I’d try to bring some sort of closure by saying DD told lies, everyone know her stories are lies and DD has apologised. I don’t want her to tell lies again. You (DS) and I are fine, we’re not in any trouble.
You can point out police and SS are there to help. Pick your phrases and stick to them to reassure your son.
Don’t mention anyone being taken away, that is incredibly scary for children.

And while you’ve got the support of a SW can you push for DDs assessments ?

OP, there are communities of parents of neurodiverse children that will have experienced this. I’m in a group and posts come up about parents who are in similar situations.

I recommend this. Not only does the website have loads of parenting resources, the fb community is supportive and ensures that children are understood, not demonised, for any challenging behaviour. Many parents will likely have been through similar.

Something similar happened when my DD was 9. I was on my way home from work and got a call from social services saying DD had made allegations about me. She'd told her teacher than I beat her and made her sleep on the floor as she didn't have a bed at home. None of it was true. I was so upset and went straight to the school to speak with the family worker and put support in place for DD. She had private counselling for a while, SS found no concerns and I just get a call about once a year to check up on us.

I remember that evening sitting crying on the sofa while DD fed me chocolates and told me she was sorry and wouldn't do it again. She wasn't in trouble but I don't think it was a bad thing that she could see how much her words had hurt me.

I hope everything is resolved and you and your DD are both supported.

I've never read anything like this. You've really been put through the ringer, OP, and I'm not sure how I'd have coped
I don't mean this unkindly, but is your daughter mentally well enough to even be at school? The poor teacher who she accused of assaulting her. What a nightmare

I think it's going to be an ongoing process for your daughter to be ok. Best of luck.