4yo - Straw Man Scenarios Creating Drama

[outofbreath]

Possibly a trivial problem but it's bugging me.

My 4yo son makes up straw man scenarios in response to situations and things that are said.

For instance: "DS,
Put your wellies on." might get the response "Awww, you're saying I can't go out ever again." combined with a strop. Or is tablet might run out of batteries and he'll say "That means I can't use my tablet ever again." It's typically in response to something that's been said by someone but not exclusively.

Is there a word/term for what he's doing?

What solutions have other people found.

My DS went through a stage of saying this at exactly the same age.

I just calmly told him that's not what I said and repeated what I did say. It went on for awhile so we also talked about it not being kind to say that someone said something they didn't actually say. Used to really annoy me!

It wasn't till I read this that I even remembered he did this. It was for a month or so I think. He's stopped without us noticing. Probably because he's replaced it with a more annoying thing!

@outofbreath

Possibly a trivial problem but it's bugging me.

My 4yo son makes up straw man scenarios in response to situations and things that are said.

For instance: "DS,
Put your wellies on." might get the response "Awww, you're saying I can't go out ever again." combined with a strop. Or is tablet might run out of batteries and he'll say "That means I can't use my tablet ever again." It's typically in response to something that's been said by someone but not exclusively.

Is there a word/term for what he's doing?

What solutions have other people found.

Possibly "catastrophising" is the word you want?

Thanks both.

"not being kind to say that someone said something they didn't actually say" - I think this might help, I've picked him up on it in all sorts of ways but I'm not sure I've spelled it out to him in quite these terms.

"Probably because he's replaced it with a more annoying thing!" -- Yes. This is his excuse to strop a couple of times a day. If we deny him this excuse he won't stop stropping, he'll just find another excuse, but I find this one especially annoying, and I'd like it to stop!

"Possibly "catastrophising" is the word you want?"

I don't think that's quite it but I think I'll use it anyway. Using a term for it will make it quicker to address. If he looks it up in the OED and gets pedantic about it I'll be grateful we have a child prodigy!!!

Thanks again.

My DS is like this, if what you mean is everything is to the extreme, eg please brush your teeth, to which he responds "I don't want to brush my teeth ALL DAY" etc. Everything is "never/forever/ALWAYS" etc.

It is wearing, but I just ignore it usually or say well it's not going to be all day, brushing your teeth takes 2 minutes and then you can play.