lying at 3 years old?

[saywhat]

i have another problem with my three year old, whom i have to say first is a very bright, lovely, normally very very good little girl. Lately though she has begun to lie, and not just lie...lie to get her little nearly 2 year old sister in trouble.

For example...last night her dad got in from work and we were all in the bath. He asks DD1 how her day was and she tells him about it...then she says, oh DD2 bit me today daddy! She certainly did not! and biting is a big offense in our house, if DD2 does bite she is put in the naughty corner. Thing is, if hubby hadnt had me there to say she did not, and ask DD1 where the mark was then, of course there wasnt one, then he may have believed her, because DD2 bit him yesterday out of excitement.

I sent DD1 to her room as punishment, but i cant get my head round it, should she be lying already at 3? and why? they both get the same attention etc, as far as i am am aware she has never been around liars...and worse..did she actually do it on PURPOSE, knowing her sister would get in trouble? I have never had a 3 year old before so i just dont know what to think, and what to do to knock it on the head?

Sometimes I really don't think that they get the difference between stories and lies. The way the world is presented to a child, reality is quite fluid and I often think they just say the first thing that pops into their heads.

Dd (3) lies about what ds has done to her. I now have a rule that unless I observed it or there is physical proof, I don't want to hear it - I am just not interested.

If they do lie to me, they sit on the floor at opposite ends of the house and nobody does anything until we get the same story from them both. For every extra minute it takes, the more trouble they are in (for us it is a night without a story in bed). This works quite well - they never hold out for more than about 2 mins and usually give in as soon as I tell them what we are going to do.

I would say, don't overthink it, but you do need to come down heavily on it because it is certainly not acceptable.

My dd makes up all kinds of stuff - the maddest thing recently was when I let her have a donkey ride on the beach. When I said 'Did you enjoy that, dd?' she said, 'No, I didn't, because I fell off and hurt myself.' Needless to say I was beside her all the time and she didn't even wobble.
She also has a terrible sense of time - 'today' might be a week ago. I think at that age they can have trouble telling fact from fiction, so I would be inclined to treat general invention gently.

However, invention that will get someone else into trouble needs to be stamped on much harder. IMO you did the right thing sending her to her room.

Also, the fact that it was an unkind thing to do - of course you need to teach her not to, but I wouldn't take it to mean she is not a nice person or that she really hates her sister. Sibling relationships can be very ambiguous - kids can love each other and be horrible to each other all at once. Your job is to consistently point her the right way until she grows out of it.

Oh my dd (now 4) has done this for ages. TBH I don't worry about it too much. I think she's quite suprised if we do ever believe her! In her case I think it's an active imagination as well as trying to drop her brother in it.

Last week we had a very long involved story about the farmer bringing a lamb into nursery, for a while I believed her, but then she upped the stakes to include a calf, horse and donkey. I suggested maybe a baby elephant too and she knew she was rumbled! I will ask her if she telling a fib and she sometimes admits that she is a "little bit".

I agree the stuff trying to get siblings in trouble is not nice, I take everything with a pinch of salt unless I saw it happen or there is physical evidence. I'm hoping she'll grow out of it sooner or later (just in time for ds to start no doubt!!!). I do think it's entirely normal though and doesn't mean your dd isn't the lovely little girl she always was!

LOL @ the farmer and the elephant Dilbertina!

well thats a relief to know others this young have done it. I have also adopted the approach that if i dont see it...i ignore it, as very frequently my eldest says dd2 did this that and the other, and my DD2 is not old enough to say wether she did or didnt.

The other day i know it was my eldest that managed to get some pens down froma cupboard, i had put them on a shelf i thought she couldnt reach, but she had stood on a stool in her bedroom. I was in the kitchen washing dishes and when i came through, wondering why it was so quiet, i found both of them covered from head to toe in the fabric pen...and the furniture and the carpet. So i asked, who did it...knowing fine well they both had, the evidence was fairly overwelming lol, and my eldest sat there saying...DD2. uh huh. So i asked her how she got pen on her...DD2. I told her she was lying, and that it was both of them wasnt it. She said yes. I told her it was wrong to lie but didnt punish her because in that instance i felt it was so blaringly obvious it was both of them...

kids. Who'd have em.

Also bear in mind that the idea of time is rather dodgy in a 3 year old's mind. She may genuinely believe it was today that she got bitten, even if it actually happened yesterday or last week.

My ds2 is only just 4 and still gets the concept of yesterday and tomorrow mixed up, and doesn't really have the concept of last week. He quite often gets confused and states something as happened "tomorrow" (he means yesterday) something that happened a week ago.

In this case rubberduck, she herself had not been bitten by DD2, DD2 had bitten her dad yesterday and proceeded to get a good telling off from him, mostly because he got a shock and it was sore, so he did lose his cool a bit. DD1 saw this, so in my adult mind she knew that biting results in a big telling off...but toddler minds are so different! I am sure she didnt mean it, its just hard to see how she couldnt have if you see what i mean!

Ah, yes do see what you mean

Be very careful.

Children at this age cannot distinguish fact from fiction in the way adults can (that's why they find all those children's stories so absorbing).

They are not "lying". They are being creative with the truth, if you like - just as all those fiction writers are. That is fine, and you should not even think of punishing your child for this. Just explain, in a jestful manner, why such "creativity with the truth" may be harmful to others. Try to get your child empathising with other people's feelings - do not enforce "rules" of behaviour.

I remember my child a while back getting very confused about some incidents at nursery and who had done what to whom. I posted on here once because she told me she'd been put on time out for hitting someone with a hammer (toy, presumably....) - turned out another boy had done the hitting and been on timeout and she had imaginatively projected herself into his position.

Agree with Anna888.

thanks for the advice anna, but i will have to disgree with you to some degree there it is NOT fine in my book, lying about biting, other things yes i will be more relaxed with but not lying about her sister biting. I wont dress up the word either, wether she is doing it intentionally or not, she is lying and thats what she will be told. She is a very imaginitive little girl and has many other ways of being creative

While you might want to stop her from telling lies to cause trouble, try not to squash her imagination, and don't be too harsh: 3 is very young to have a full and permanent understanding of right and wrong (which is why life with 3 year olds is so, um, entertaining and varied). My DS sometimes claims that someone else at nursery hurt him: when it started I had a quiet word with nursery staff who agreed that one of the other DC was going through a bit of an agressive phase and they were watching it, but later on DS got a bit imaginative about it so I now tend to take the attitude that if I didn't see it it's not my problem.

My partner was sitting in the bath with our three year old the other day and asked her, in French, whether she needed her hair washing.

She turned to me, and asked in English, whether her hair needed washing. I said yes.

She turned to her father and said "Maman a dit non" (Mummy said no).

My partner and I burst out laughing and have teased her about it mercilessly.

She is learning that she cannot fool us...

My DS (2 1/2) told me yesterday in the queue for the supermarket checkout that the lady in front had pushed him!!! She hadn't of course and I tried to make light of it whilst hiding my big grin!

DD's first lie: I heard an unusual whimper of 'mummy' in the bathroom one day. so i went find out right away. her lip was bleeding and i could see 2 little nicks. I asked, 'Were you playing with mummy's razor?' Answer: No .

but

i think at 3, there days and events blend into one another so i could not be sure it was a lie.

example: dd took 2 coats (don't ask why) to nursery on Monday but not yesterday.

DH picked her up yesterday and he asked her if she brought a coat in the morning. she said yes she brought two. so they spent ages looking for her two coats till he rang me to confirm whether or not she had.
curiously, there were some sunglasses in the nursery which were the exact make and colour as hers and he asked her if she had brought her sunglasses too. she was quite sure she hadn't though.

I have seen other evidence of her days and events not matching up.

could not be sure your *scenario (it) was a lie

DS has been lying loads lately.
He told me that the reason he put the cat in the cooker was because he saw the farmer across the road do it out off his window.
You can't see the farmers windows.
I've just been trying to emphasise the difference between lying and pretending.

don't agree all children of that age can't tell the difference between fact and fiction. ds1 definitely was lying at that age, also of course was telling fabulous fantasy stories, but the lies were something different. he's just always been good at deceiving and will make a skilled politician .
ds2 on the other hand is now 4 and still hopeless at telling fibs. nothing irritates me more than the parents of, say, 7 or 8 year olds who insist their kids don't lie when I've heard them tell barefaced lies. parents won't have any of it of course.
wouldn't make too much of a deal out of it, just useful to be aware so you don't go ballistic like my mum used to. my little sis could manipulate my mum from an early age and my poor brother was forever getting yelled at for 'hitting' that never happened etc. of course, he'd then get so mad at her blatant lies that he'd go and whack her, right in front of my mum. my sister - master manipulator aged 3