Would you always believe the child?

I wouldn't necessarily believe an accusation against someone simply because it was a child who made it, not if it had been thoroughly looked into and I was convinced it wasn't true. How I approached it would depend on the context, obviously. Some children can and do manipulate, exaggerate, and lie to get their way, and it isn't good to give in to their every whim. And then there are the situations where children aren't being intentionally misleading, yet still misinterpret or misrepresent something that's happened.

But yes, if I had a child who had (apparently) falsely accused someone of mistreating them, I'd take it seriously and insist on addressing the root of the problem. It wouldn't be much of a life for anyone without taking steps to understand why they accused the other person and how the situation could be improved.

And for the people who say that it’s a good idea to get rid of the step dad because the kid is clearly unhappy would you “get rid” of yourself if you were the one accused? Would you move out of the home and let the child live full time with the other parent because clearly s/he is unhappy if they have lied about you abusing them? I don’t think many people would.

Yes but that’s clearly a situation where you know your child to be lying and would have to say so. A lot of people on here saying kids wouldn’t make something like that up assume it could never happen to them. It’s all well and good when it’s someone else but a child who lies about a step parent may well turn on the biological parent too.

People who think this is black and white probably haven't parented a child with a traumatic past. My daughter tells lies and is only 9. Things like brother did XYZ. I question brother, she turns out to be the antagonist and later admit it.
They aren't harmful lies at the moment, but I am terrified of what she might say in the years to come and how we will cope with it.

Being completely honest, no I wouldn’t automatically. My child told me that her teacher slammed her fingers in her desk. I know this teacher very well and I know my child very well. It did happen but was entirely an accident. My child wasn’t lying, it’s just their perception (SEN) wasn’t the full picture and of course the difference between a teacher catching a child’s fingers by accident and callously slamming it down is HUGE and career/life defining. You do need to have some discernment. I would imagine get frequent false (and sadly some real) accusations against foster carers. Discernment is needed for everyone’s sake.

It doesn't matter if it bothers you though, particularly.

You don't know what's going on behind closed doors, what help the boy is getting in private. You don't know if the boy lied (because he doesn't like his step dad or because he's troubled in some other way), or if the step dad is a tyrant and the mum is being amused.

Turning someone else's family problems into a hypothetical "What would you do?" is distasteful. None of us knows until we're in that situation, and we don't even know that woman's reasoning.

If you are close to anyone in this family, just offer support and keep an open mind.

Tricky, wouldn't automatically believe. Children lie. Extreme damage can be done. I'd know!

What do you mean? There's nothing you can do except protest your innocence.

My DD8 can embellish things and some times does make stuff up regarding things at school etc. However I would 100% believe her if she said someone had hit/assulated her and support her through it

I agree with the posters saying that in this case, if the teenager is lying, that still means there is an issue to be addressed.

Yes but it’s not always the best solution to end the relationship which was what the OP suggested. MN hates step parents and blended families and will happily suggest that someone ends a relationship at the smallest thing to “put the kids first”. But what if the child lies about a biological parent? Would you divorce the child’s father because they clearly feel unhappy enough to lie about him? Or if you are the target yourself? How do you deal with the “issue” then? Would you move out of your home or send the child to the other parent?

I think giving in to a demand like that can be quite damaging. Sometimes what a child needs to hear is that you know they are lying, lying is wrong but we can all move on and forgive each other. If the child’s lies lead to people losing jobs or families breaking down, that’s a huge burden and responsibility to place on the child, one that is likely to haunt them into adulthood.

It’s like the book/film Atonement. The main character is a child with an overactive imagination, she comes up with a far fetched story that everyone believes and which she feels she can’t backtrack from, an innocent man is sent to jail and she spends the rest of her life trying to atone for it. That’s where “always believe children” can end up. The child might be wishing that you DON’T believe them.

I think it's ridiculous to have a policy of always believing, or always not believing someone.

I think this whenever there's a thread where a child has said something happened with a teacher and the replies are often "well children lie, a teacher wouldn't behave like that".
Don't automatically believe anyone. But don't automatically dismiss anyone either.

I agree with the posters saying that in this case, if the teenager is lying, that still means there is an issue to be addressed.

Yes I have seen this happening too. Teens and preteens can be extremely manipulative and they know that if they lie about things like violence and sexual abuse that people may believe them and it will cause their target serious harm.

I remember when I was about 11 at school and we hated our new male teacher (non UK country so at this age still one teacher for a whole class rather than different ones for different subjects). In hindsight, he was a nice guy and our hatred was misplaced. He was just a bit annoying and we didn’t like that he told us off for things. Some of the girls came up with an idea that we should say he was a pervert and that he kept coming into the girls changing rooms and were encouraging us all to say this. It all escalated but one of the class parents had a really sharp word with the girls and outright called them liars. He used to be a teacher himself and volunteered at the school and I think he sensed what was happening. This was in the 90s and I think things would have been handled very differently today. Basically the lie was shut down right from the outset and the girls were told that nobody believed them. Good thing really as it was totally fictitious and would have ruined this man’s life. He did leave the following year and I do still feel bad even though I wasn’t one of the ringleaders. But children 100% tell lies in some circumstances and automatically believing them is dangerous.

Our job as adults is to guide children, help children, keep them safe. Sometimes that entails helping them when they are lying because they’re immature and don’t know better. Has anyone read the Crucible?

A question for the people who say they would always believe the child: what would you do if the child accused you of child sex abuse but you knew you hadn’t done it?

If you search on here there’s loads of posts from mums whose DC have lied to the school about being hit by their mum and social services being called in. Children definitely do lie and one thing I’d think about is whether the adult in question had opportunity to hit the child. Do they spend long periods on their own with the child? Also I’d think about how do they react when the child misbehaves. Obviously if others are around, they wouldn’t hit the child but someone who is violent like that would most likely display signs such as extreme irritation or shouting. The OP’s friend might have known for instance that the step dad is very rarely alone with her son apart from a few minutes here and there and always leaves all discipline to her. That would make it quite unlikely that the story is true.

Also sometimes the child IS being abused but not by the person they named. They name a “safe” person to take their frustration out on.

'We need to talk about Kevin'

Children can lie, he's is at that age, my SD put me through the ringer at the age of 13, she was acting out and I took the brunt of it, she lied a lot about the way I treat her and then I would hear her laughing about it with her mates. She would ignore me when no one else was in the house and absolutely take the piss out of me

Her dad knew exactly what was going on and had SS been involved (which they were but for something else) and I had been accused and he would have told them it was absolute nonsense

This is a really important distinction and I've said similar about the importance of "believing" women who say they've been sexually assaulted or domestically abused, too.

If you didn't witness something and there's no concrete evidence then you have to accept that you don't know the truth and maybe never will. And that uncertainty is inherent to most sexual assault and domestic abuse because of the nature of the crime.

But despite that uncertainty, if this happens to someone in your life then your action/lack of action will signal belief/disbelief either way. So choosing to believe a potential victim isn't actually about whatever "the real truth" is, it's about standing up for and giving support to someone who may need it (and in the case of your child, someone who literally depends on you for it).

Exactly, my friend's DD put a plaster on her head and when we were at a playgroup the leader asked her what happened and she said 'mummy smacked me round the head with a bat'.....kids are inventive, obviously they always need you to stand by them but to say you believe them 100% of the time would be bananas.

Through work I've been involved in a situation where a child lied about a member of staff hitting them. We know they lied because another member of staff was in the room at the time.

Child lied because they were angry about something else (and had complex home life).

Went to court and was dismissed.

Children don't always tell the truth because they don't always appreciate the magnitude of the allegation and the potential consequences.

Children do distort the truth / lie though. One of my dc told me I was committing child abuse and she was going to tell her teacher. Dear reader I’d told her to tidy her room and removed electronics till the task was completed. Apparently preventing communication is a breach of a United Nations charter on rights of the child.

I think context is really important. If you don’t know the facts / didn’t witness the event. It’s hard to say one way or the other what is reasonable in the circumstances. That said I’m a single parent and I’ve made the decision not to get involved with anyone till Dc are grown as I’d rather not balance competing needs of a relationship and teenagers.

Don't think it's as black and white as you make out OP. Your friend might have been absolutely sure of her partner not having done what the son claimed. I think caution should always be exercised to properly investigate any claims but as a PP said, kids lie for all sorts of reasons and it might not be really anything to do with the stepdad in this instance. I do agree that a child's claim should never just be ignored though.

My DH caused a huge issue requiring social services involvement in his childhood when after falling from a shed roof and suffering a head injury he told the hospital staff that his dad had thrown him across a room in temper. Complete lie he made up on the spot for no reason whatsoever. He was a perfectly nice kid with nice parents.

I would believe my children but also want it investigated. I would rather lose a relationship with a partner due to not believing them than lose a relationship with my children.

I don’t know if you should always believe the child, but I think you should always stand by the child, until you can ascertain the truth – if you can. If there is the possibility of truth, it’s just not worth sacrificing the relationship with your child, and if they are telling lies to this degree then something is going on that needs a parent’s full support and attention anyway.

I would hope the other adult would understand this process, and realise it isn’t about trust or being offended, it’s literally just an awful situation to find yourself in. We know, without doubt, that people can be blindsided every day in discovering being betrayed, so trust can only take you so far in this world.

It would also depend on whether the child had previously made threats to lie about the step parent. If they have form for saying “if you don’t let me do X I will tell the school you hit me” then that would cast any allegation into doubt. I would also assess whether they seem scared or subdued around the step parent.

But remember some kids tell serious lies against their biological parents for various reasons. It’s easy to dismiss lies against a step parent as “well if they feel that strongly then I will end the relationship”. But what if the next target is you?