Endless over-honesty..need advice.

[namedchanged]

DS is 5, he's in reception at school. Over the last 6 months he's developed what I can only describe as 'over-honesty'. For example, he called a child a name, 'poo pants' or similar. He then decided that this was a bad thing to do, and insisted that this child told the teacher. The child refused, so DS told the teacher himself.

He does this endlessly over a variety of relatively minor misdemeanour's. At least twice a week he will have a 'confessional' at home, end up in floods of tears and will not let it go until I finally have to go into school and inform the teacher of what he has done, whilst he sits there. Once I have done this, he calms down.

Obviously, honesty is a good thing, but this kind of honestly isn't...and I'm starting to get worried. He's five, he shouldn't be stressed like this.

Any ideas on how I can deal with it? I'm at my wits end.

all of mine do this,

none of them can live with any form of duplicity,

it's jolly handy when they turn into teens, (we did have to be discreet,as our eldest's friends would be shocked how much we know about their lives)

they do get very hurt when others don't live by the same rules,

mine are labeled under the "A" umbrella.

try to enjoy that your child is not capable of concealing, and turn it into a positive.

Thanks for your reply quote, did they become distressed though?, like sobbing, at 5? This is what concerns me..

His sense of right and wrong is clearly causing him a lot of anxiety.

Could you ask his teacher to give him a couple of minutes at the end of each day to confess anything that's bothering him so he doesn't have to bring this baggage home?

I don't know if he is able to write his worries down yet but, if not, he soon will be able to do that so perhaps his teacher next year could give him the opportunity to offload into a little book which she can read when it's convenient. That way he doesn't have to wait until someone is available to listen to him. He can write it down and move on.

when we come out of school we ask,

"what were the best bits, and what were the worse",

this opens up the dialogue, (better than, what did you do today?)for a full debrief,

mine go into full melt down if they have to conceal anything, we had nightmares getting this across to MiL, who would have them, do something not particularly important like give them sweets, then say things like "don't tell your dad',

if you did this to my middle son he would take days to calm down, his sobs could be heard in the next county.

we have been through difficulties when children's friends and peers, find their over honesty hard, but it has worked out, they have lovely friends, ones that don't stress them out too much, as they are nice children to be friends with, as they tend to be nice, to avoid stressing themselves out.