False accusation

[Nel81]

Just had to have a meeting with social services and the police at my son's school. He (5) told a teacher that I slapped his forehead and 'mummy' hurts me'. When the social worker and the police officer played and spoke with him, he said nobody hurt him. I did not do what he told the teacher and the police and social worker were happy nothing needs investigating but how do I deal with this? How do I go forward with the school? What if he claims something happens again? Has anybody else been in this situation? If so, how did you deal with it? TIA

There was a good al coates podcast on this,it's very common.my DD also says things like ....hurt me etc but can mean hurt my feelings,or will say it when its definitely clearly not true.theres also a bit in the trauma informed classroom book I think.ive let the school know in advance of her starting that this is a thing and it sounds like your school is quite good and clued up about it maybe?it's so hard.i think there's a thread here somewhere that may be helpful too.

It’s not uncommon in adoption, I’ve had to deal with it a couple of times. In my case my DC struggles with narrative memory so doesn’t have a time line for her own life. This means she will talk about things that happened years ago like it happened yesterday and vice versa. She also has a number of different people she has called mum and dad, so it can get confusing.

She is doing therapeutic life story work, which is very hard but is helping straighten things out in her own mind.

I have a good relationship with the school and the leadership team really understand adoption, I also understand social work process and they have my child’s historic records and know that false memory and false allegations are common. I still go through the process, which is stressful, but I don’t worry that people think I’ve hurt my child. Any disclosure prompts conversation about what made her say X and how she feels about what happened eg police/ social work involvement to help process it all. Your DC is younger though, but speaking it through in an age appropriate way can help.

One set of disclosures led to charges being brought against someone who did hurt her pre-adoption, so it was worthwhile to work with her and support her. It’s hard though because it can raise feelings of fear, embarrassment and stress which in turn can make you scared to care for her in case she says something else that sparks a process.

I have two children, the older one (19) a birth child and the younger (13) an adopted child.

Wen my older child was about 14 he was very troubled and tried to take an overdose. At the hospital, he told he nurse I bullied him, which I did not.

Social services opened a file and investigated, they spoke to the school and after a short while were satisfied that all was well and closed the file.

My child was having some significant mental health issues and I think telling the nurses that I bullied him was a kind of release for him. I was quite upset but I also realised my child was acting out in a certain way (he is on the autistic spectrum).

I hope that my son did learn that telling stories about what has happened is really unhelpful and even dangerous.

We made our peace and it has never happened again.

I don't know if that helps you at all but hopefully schools are wise enough to know that children do sometimes lie about things. The school did need to investigate in whatever way they do because they needed to be reassured that all was well. And now they know it is.

But try not to be too upset because it probably is more common that one would imagine, for kids to make things up.

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