Off the bat: DD is a caring and empathetic 5yo. She treats her younger brothers beautifully. She has a nice group of friends. Her teachers love her. She’s developing totally normally. When this issue first arose, the first thing I did was ask her teacher if she was bullying or being nasty to anyone, so that we could nip it in the bud together, and the teacher looked at me as if I’d grown a second head. “[DD] is lovely. She has never bullied anyone, ever.”
With that out of the way…
DD has been saying weird and horrible things to me. “I don’t like Black people” (two of the friends she plays with most are Black, as are her teacher and an aunty she sees nearly every week). “Papa is always unfair with me. He loves [brother] way more than me. I don’t like Papa anymore.” (there are no issues with DH showing any sort of favouritism). “[new friend] is annoying. She always wants to play with me and follows me around everywhere. I’ll let her watch me play with other people, but I’ll never play with her again.”
When I pull her up on these things, she immediately backtracks (not in any way panicked, not like she’s worried I’m angry, just in a casual conversational style) and says: “It’s not real. I was just imagining it.”
Is this normal??? Any ideas as to what could be going on? How should I deal with this?
I’m working hard to tread the line between making her feel like she can always tell me anything, and telling her in no uncertain terms that some of these “imaginary” ideas could seriously hurt other people if she voices them at school.