3 year old constant telling ‘stories’

[AzureHawker]

Hi just wondering if my 3 year old is ‘normal’, I have 2 older kids and all 3 have been early talkers but the older 2 are quite quiet natured, however my youngest talks constantly, at home, when we are out, to family and friends, random parents at the school gates, strangers in the street basically if someone stands near him for more than a second he will talk to them.

I quite like having an outgoing child after 2 more reserved kids but the issue is that if he has nothing to say he just makes up a story from nowhere and he tells them quite convincingly, for example he recently told me a story about rabbit he had last year that was his best friend and had such lovely soft ears that he stroked them at night when he was going to sleep and in the day time he took it for walks to a field and fed it lettuce. It was so convincing I almost believed he had a pet rabbit even though I know he’s never had one! He tells lots of stories about when he ‘used to be a grown up’ and he did fun stuff like driving his car places. He tells not very nice stories about poo or peoples heads falling off (hilarious to a 3 year old ).

I’m beginning to wonder if it’s a problem that he makes up so much nonsense? He seems quite convinced that some of the things he says are true, other times he is just being silly and trying to make us laugh. Sometimes I worry what he says at nursery as there have already been a few times his teacher has repeated stories he had told her which I have had to say aren’t true but he had obviously managed to convince them.

Should I be making it clear to him that I know that what he saying isn’t true or just letting him tell the stories? I don’t want to ruin his imagination at this age so I don’t tell him off for making up stories, sometimes if he seems really convinced of something outlandish I will say something like “it would be nice if that did happen” or “just as well that didn’t really happen” and he will sometimes get upset that I don’t believe him. I feel like he will either grow up to be a successful author or a pathological liar at this rate!

He sounds great fun. I remember trying to quieten out three ish son when going to primary to interview the head about a place for our daughter. I tried unsuccessfully to get him to quieten until the head pointed out we’d spent just over two years encouraging him to talk a lot and broaden his vocabulary and now we felt it necessary to tell him to be quiet. Her view was they had a whole lifetime to be quiet in. She was a fabulous primary head.

I think I used to vary from ‘that would be lovely’ on patient days to ‘not the time for talking’ on less patient days or times he needed to learn to sit still and be quiet.

Children with healthy imaginations are usually quite bright and soon understand reality and pretend. Ours didn’t grow into either an author or a pathological liar, but remains a good storyteller socially. That has stood him in good stead in his career, that involves an amount of formal entertaining.

Thank you for replying, he really is great fun although I have to admit I breathe a sigh of relief once he falls asleep some nights. I actually love his stories and worry that I sometimes encourage him a bit too much because I enjoy listening to his take on how the world works. Although tonight’s urgent bedtime news was a blow by blow account of the time daddy ran over a frog which got stuck to his car wheel but luckily Ds managed to save it and put it in a pond where it did a poo that was as big as a dog poo.. I wasn’t sure about that one!

I suppose you’re right and he will eventually learn what’s real and what isn’t, hopefully along with learning which stories are appropriate for old ladies in shops and which aren’t!

Your dds old headteacher sounds lovely, definitely the right way to look at things!