to ask why some MNS are so against believing their kids

[lailamaria]

I see this a lot in threads about parents complaining about their childrens teachers or kids complaining about other children, i understand some kids lie but i think i'd rather take an allegation seriously ie a teacher insulting a child than just let my kid be bullied by their teacher. Obviously if they are lying have consequences but sometimes teachers are arseholes (family of teachers here, the stories i've heard) and kids do need to be listened too.

I agree, I always listen to my kids. Sometimes I have to inperpret what they actually mean be cause of SEN

It's not that they are lying. It's usually a combination of miss remembering, misinterpreting and exaggerating. None of which is probably done intentionally but you can't always expect a 6 year old to understand the full context of a comment or action.
Yes you should follow up but keep an open mind for a reasonable explanation.

My 8 year old DSS argues with me until he's blue in the face that we didn't do anything for his 8th birthday. It was a couple months ago. Was a whole day experience. We have pictures. He has no memory of the day out. It's similar for a lot of other events and non events. So it would depend on the kid for me and the situation. I'd want to get all the facts first. Barring violence or sexual abuse obviously.

I certainly wouldn't dismiss something a child said had happened in class or in school, but I do remember being a chid myself. Apart from misremembering, children do lie on occasion. It is part of problem solving when they discover how to lie and then we have to convince them why they shouldn't lie.

It goes both ways. The stories my children told their teachers while growing up make me cringe so much. Thankfully the stories were so elaborate that they were unbelievable (like my husband cut off our daughter’s hand because she wouldn’t eat her sweetcorn and along those lines). I think if nursery workers and teachers etc had to follow up every exaggeration a child told them, they’d be forever reporting.
I think one poster above nailed it; investigate but keep an open mind.

I think it’s often not about lying as such, more that sometimes kids don’t understand some of the subtleties of adult interaction/behaviour. Here’s a silly example: I walked past my DD’s new teacher (for next year) in school reception yesterday. We made eye contact, so he said “Hello” and I said a cherry hello in return. My DD (who is 10 - and pretty switched on generally) was genuinely baffled by how I knew him and how he knew I was her mum. And she was slightly nonplussed by the fact that I said I don’t and he doesn’t; I was just clearly a parent, (possibly one whose face he recognised at most), so it was just polite and appropriate to say something in that moment.

So take that as an example. If she’s said to someone “Mummy and Mr Smith already know each other”, she’d have honestly believed it. But she’d have drawn the wrong inference from that interaction.

Agree with others here, it's not suspicion of lying as such, it's a young child's perspective on a situation that may not reflect reality. In y1 DD sometimes came home and said that nobody would play with her, and she had to spend THE WHOLE lunchtime on her own. I was of course worried she had no friends and was being left out, so asked her teacher what was going on. It turned out that it was never more than about 5 mins that she was on her own, and nobody wanted to play the actual thing she was doing (often something quite specific, like pretending to be a butterfly or something), but she was very welcome to join in with their games if she wanted to. DD is now 11 and still has no concept of time, but spends less time pretending to be a butterfly, so has become generally a more reliable witness!

When they're young they also spend a lot of time in make believe land, and separating what is really from what is not can take some effort.

I can think of three occasions where school have phoned/emailed parents to tell their side of a story before the parents were told a childish interpretation. Such as the time we got an email to tell us the school bus hadn't crashed, but had been stuck on the motorway for a couple of hours behind a crash.

It's not that they are lying. It's usually a combination of miss remembering, misinterpreting and exaggerating.

This. So when someone claims 'it definitely happened like that, my kids don't lie' anyone who has ever spent any time with kids will rightly point out how fucking dumb that opinion is.

In my experience the kids who's parents are like that are often the actual liars because they haven't been taught not to.

I listen to my kids but am also aware this is their perspective and that there are usually 2 sides to every story (am a teacher)

Whenever there is a situation at DS school, the head teacher will email and say not to believe what DC say 🙄

Even when 12 DC came home telling parents about an issue this year - all 12 children should not be believed (because its easier to say the children are lieing than to say a teacher made a mistake).

I work in a school, I can tell you, children lie, a lot. To their parents, to their teachers, to the office staff. It's never very well planned, and they never seem to think we will talk to each other 😂

I find it more odd that parents think their kids teachers lie to them! I'm not saying that never happens, there are crappy teachers out there, but on the whole they just want the best for your kids!

You obviously must always listen to what your kids are saying because even if its not true, if you know your kid, you can read between the lines and expand the conversation.

Also, they do tend to come clean, but you have to give them a chance to do so!

Children may misinterpret or lie. Teachers are not all lovely people. Enough of mine weren't. And DD is a teacher, and I trained as a teacher, and taught adults. If you start from a position of 'investigating' what the child has said, and don't go in all guns blazing, that's a good thing isn't it. Obs if its really trivial, I would probably not bother. But there are times I needed to step in. And on these couple of occasions, no, DD wasn't lying.

There are definitely a lot of posts that encourage checking but there are a significant minority that insist it didn’t happen, the teacher can’t have done it and the kid was probably misbehaving anyway.

Experience with my two, plus many other children over the years (work with children) has taught me that they do sometimes misremember, misread situations, embellish, exaggerate etc.

I had a conversation with my 13 year old last night where she was convinced that I'd pulled one of her loose teeth out when she was 6/7. There is no way this happened - wobbly teeth give me the ick! And actually I remember that particular tooth because she refused to eat or drink for several days due to it and it eventually fell out over night thank god. She will often say I've agreed to things when I haven't, my youngest is always full of stories that may or may not have happened (but she's a lot younger, so kind of standard!)
At work I see it all the time, "X just punched me!" No, they accidentally walked into you. Etc.

I think it's just important to be open minded in situations where we haven't got both sides to a story. If my children came home saying they'd been called names or bullied I would want to have a conversation with their teacher, but I wouldn't go in guns blazing.

We always tell children about the boy who cried wolf, but I think adults need to keep in mind too that kids do lie, sometimes they have misinterpreted the situation or remembered events incorrectly. Despite this we should always give them the benefit of the doubt and investigate just in case.

Experience.

Generally truthful DC can get the wrong end of the stick, or only tell the first half of the story, or exaggerate, or many other permutations of trying things out and sometimes getting it wrong.

It's always worth finding out, of course, but in a genuine spirit of enquiry. Not assuming the worst of others. Because unless and until you actually find a cause for concern, go with the numbers - DC misrepresenting events is extremely common. Abuse in schools is not.

I have this at work all the time. Kids sometimes outright lie but usually it's because they haven't fully understood what's happened.

One parent came and asked me why her child had only had 'pasta and cabbage' for lunch. They had actually had spaghetti bolognaise with salad. Another parent really angry her child had not had an apple a fruit time. Apparently she was the only one. No, fruit was pear that day and her child hadn't wanted one.

At my school we do a lot of work with the new reception parents about how children can only tell us what they remember and to come and ask if they are not sure what's gone on,

Agree with the pp who said that the 'my kids don't lie' brigade are usually the parents of the biggest liars and troublemakers because what they mean is "I believe everything my kids say and if it's something I don't like I kick off and they like to wind me up and watch me go".

But also, adults do sometimes misremember things.

I remember my mother being adamant that I’d fallen out with some other girls on a sleepover and she’d had to collect me the next day. This didn’t happen. To this day I don’t know if she just made it up in her own mind and started believing it or whether she mixed it with another occasion. But she was wrong.

She did also lie sometimes about what she’d said. She was a teacher, it wouldn’t have surprised me if she lied about her students.

Many are teachers or work with young people or have no children. People tend to be more sceptical and perhaps neutral when it comes to other people's children.

there are a significant minority that insist it didn’t happen, the teacher can’t have done it and the kid was probably misbehaving anyway.

When there are a lot of posts like that on a thread it's usually because the OP or others are insisting that an unlikely tale is true and people become equally strident. Nuance is lost quickly on SM.

No, I’ve definitely seen threads go like that with no real provocation. There was an awful one a couple of weeks ago.

I think you'll find that most posts about believing the teachers and not the children come from teachers.

I've found with my children, especially my eldest, he'll tell me about something happening at school and it'll start off truthful and then he'll start exaggerating and adding more and more until it becomes total lies. I think he just gets caught up in his own imagination.
Sometimes kids do lie, or massively embellish.

The story I've always been told by DS about any incident at school (usually as soon as I see him, before contact from the school) has always lined up with the teacher's version of events. That, along with a few bad experiences of being lied about by teachers myself as a child, means that if the stories ever didn't line up then I'd be inclined to believe my child.