dd just told her first lie at 21 mths! At least i think it's her first...

[mangolassi]

Is this normal? Okay, so it wasn't the most elaborate fib - she opened the fridge, pulled out a pack of soy milk and dropped it all over the floor. dp came to clean up and asked her (not angrily), who did this? She said, mummy! I heard, came out of the bathroom and said, 'no it was you', dp said 'ooh, you're lying'

Her response: 'No no, mummy'

What age do they normally start, um, telling stories?

And how bad is it that dp and I couldn't stop laughing?

My ds is just 17mths and has already told me a little fib. I was watching him playing in the garden through the window and he was struggling to pull his lawnmower up a step and so started crying through frustration so I went outside to him and said "oh what's up little man?" and he replied "a bee!" and rubbed his arm and so I said "a bee? Where is it now?" and he replied "gone!" and carried on playing. "Drama" and "queen" sprint to mind!

Entirely normal - my much younger sister could not understand how we KNEW that it wasn't Daddy who had crayoned all over the wall in the hall... And ds thought his claim that dh had thrown the contents of the toybox all over the floor was most convincing!

Sometimes I overhear ds1 telling ds2 to do something naughty. Then when ds2 does it ds1 shouts 'mummy, * drawing on the walls'

Sneaky

There was a really funny segment on Child of our Time a couple of years ago, when the children were around 3ish.

They put each child in a room with a massive choclate cake, covered in gooey chocolate icing and smarties and told them not to touch it. The parent then left the room and nearly every child ate some cake. The parent came back in and asked if they'd touched the cake. Every single child said 'no', despite the fact that most of them had chocolate beards!

The point of it was, very young children don't lie maliciously but will fib to try and stay out of trouble. However, and this is the key bit, they genuinely believe what they are saying. Kind of like putting their hands over their eyes and thinking you can't see them because they can't see you. If they tell you it was Daddy then it must have been Daddy!

I also crack up at those type of fibs - it's the earnest expression on their faces that does it!

Ooh edam, you think dp might not be responsible for the lovely crayon-y squiggles adorning our hallway?

They should include it in those cheesy 'milestones' books you get - first step, first word, first fib...

olihan - i think she really did believe it, she looked so innocent

mango, did you put dp on the naughty step until he said sorry?

Ds put dh on the step once... I pointed out he'd have to stay there for 35 minutes and ds said 'good' and walked off!

I think it's more complex than just wanting tostay out of trouble.

I think they say whatever they think parents want to hear, want to 'make it nice'fo the parent who will then smile etc. They actually thin that is the ight thing o do.

So in the case of the choc cake experiment - they had been told not to touch the cake, they thought it was important to the adult to har that the chooc cake had not been touched - so said it hadn't been as a way of making the adult pleased, rather than 'dishonestly' avoiding 'trouble'.

DS often used to give the answer he thought was most wnated by / seemed most important to an adult rather than what actually happened.

Also, anythng they think has happened, or they have imagined, they will report as actual - developmentally they cannot always distinguish between fact and imaginary.

But LOL!

|LOL. My DD3 was about 24m, so clearly a litle behind:

When asked who "broke the flower" the conversation went like this:

Me: Who broke mummy's flower?
DD3: Flower, broke...
Me: Who did it
DD3: DTD1 (instant response)
Me: No not DTD1
DD3: DTD2 (instant response)
Me: No, not DTD2
DD3: (ponders)...daddy
Me: No, not Daddy
DD3: (ponders), mummy
Me: No, not mummy
DD3: (ponders hard) next door neighbour
Me: No, Not neighbour
DD3: (next door neighbours) Doggy (instant response)
Me: No, not doggy
DD3: (random neighbourhood) cat
Me: No, not cat

...so who did break my flower cos it is a mystery to me

I think DD1 knew it wasn't the cat who'd drawn on our walls, Blu...

Derren Brown did something like that on one of his trick or trweat shows. He then tried it on a grown woman. Put her in a room with a kitten in a box and said 'don't press that button. It will kill the kitten' Then he regressed her to a child like state eand she pressed the button at the last minute.

Okay blu, now I'm confused, cos I was within earshot when dp asked dd who did it... seems more like wanting to stay out of trouble than wanting to make daddy happy

I understand that once she'd said it, it became true - so she stuck to it even when I emerged from the bathroom to point fingers!

Sop how does that "they believe what they are saying" thing work with my story then?

Cos DD3 clearly didn't believe that DTD1, or DTD2, or mummy, or daddy....did it cos she kept changing her mind.

DNA, you made me flash back to growing up -
mum: who did x?
stepfather: it wasn't me, it was dd
dd: not me, it was ds1
ds1: not me, it was ds2

ds2 (ie my youngest brother) was never happier than the summer we took care of a friends dog and he had someone to pass the buck onto!

WEl, it seems that many develop strategi fibbing early on then - great survival skll!

I remember as a child being very upset that my little sister had seen Santa Claus in his sleigh flying down on Christmas Eve and I hadn't.

Of course I lied, pretending I had seen it, so she did not have one up on me but felt very sad all the same.

my friend's little girl, aged about 2, once said when asked what she had been doing at nursery that day: 'A lion came and ate the teacher.' she stuck doggedly to this story through thick, thin and being delivered back to nursery the next day where the teacher appeared strangely uneaten....

lol dd aged nearly 2 talks a lot, her best friend three months younger doesn't. He was sat at the table with her eating lunch and he threw a crisp packet on the floor, his mum play-frowns at him saying 'J, who threw the crisp packet on the floor' he looked at her really solemnly and said 'lunavix-dd'. (obviosuly her name lol) it was just so funny that he's never said her name and lied to boot!