I told a lie when I was 8 years old.....and it's eating me up...

[NCforthisone12]

I told a stupid lie to my parents when I was 8 years old.

It was regarding an ailment / synptom which required lots of medical investigation and time of school. It caused great stress to my family.

I kept the lie going for a good few months and honestly.... I simply don't know why I did it. I had a happy, stable childhood with no reason to cry for help or do something like this. Eventually one day I just said it was better and everyone was relieved.

I think I just made it up one day for a bit of attention and then didn't know how to get out of it.

Anyway I'm now well into my adult like (35) and it eats me up. I feel so guilty. Sometimes my family talk about it and how worrying it was and I just feel so terrible.

I've considered telling them but I just feel it would be so hurtful to them. I don't think I could.

What should I do? Is this a normal child behaviour? Anyone else had any similar experiences?

It's ok for a child who is having some internal difficulties to express that as best they can and get adult attention and care - including medical care!

I think this is very true. Between the ages of about 10-11 DS had lots of unexplained 'illnesses' including feeling sick, having blinding headaches and unexplained pains in different parts of his body.
My gut feeling was that not of these were physiological illnesses, as I'd watch him recover too suddenly when distracted, or the environment changed.
In retrospect I think they were his way of coping and escaping from situations he found too stressful and overwhelming.
He later had a diagnosis for a specific learning issue/ neurodiversity and it all seemed to make sense.

Don't worry about it, OP, perhaps you were just doing something you needed to do for some reason at that point in your childhood!

I did this. Had my appendix out. For no reason at all. All because the boy next door had his out and got loads of time off school. This was 42 years ago. I was 9. I admitted it to my Mum about 30 years ago and all she said was, 'I did wonder. The Dr did say it wasn't very inflamed'....

Being totally honest, lots of things that 8 year olds say are taken with a pinch of salt - I don’t think it’s a big deal.
When you were 8 you were perhaps attention seeking and that typical behaviour of an 8 year old - no worries.
Also having had a short period of training at a children’s hospital years ago I know psychosomatic pain is very real and as painful as real physical pain - so this is permission if you like to accept that your pain at that time was probably very genuine.

When we were kids, my friend's classmate had her appendix removed. My friend then copied the symptoms the classmate had, and I don't really understand how it got so far, but my friend's perfectly healthy appendix was removed.

She didn't mean it to go so far, she just wanted a couple of days off school!

My kids are that age now, and I wouldn't hold a lie like that against them. They're just kids, they're still learning.

Please please don't tell your parents, it will bring nothing but negative emotions for them. You have beaten yourself up long enough, it is time to let it go now.

When I was 13 I told my friend I'd been raped. I had never lied before or since. It just popped out of my mouth and then I had to keep it up for a day. I confessed the next day and thankfully she hadn't told anyone.
Just thinking about it recently, I remembered my baby niece had died suddenly a few months before. Stress/anxiety/sadness do funny things.

Maybe it's something that you could talk through with a professional. That is likely to help you be more forgiving of yourself. Perhaps a time limited thing of 3 to 6 sessions.

“Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

I’m not one for quoting the Bible but it’s apt.

Around the same age I walked for weeks with a limp to get attention. We were kids. You can let go of this xx

A couple of sessions of EMDR therapy and you'll be able to let this go completely.

Please forgive yourself OP.
I hope the stories on this thread have reassured you that children do unusual things for no clear reason (or sometimes reasons are clearer with hindsight).
Children’s brains aren’t as developed as adults so their foresight , empathy, understanding of the world is completely different.
You sound a lovely person who doesn’t deserve to carry this guilt.

Honestly @NCforthisone12 please let this go and don't waste another moment feeling guilty! My eldest son is just 9 and if he did something like that and admitted it, I would just be relieved he was okay! Maybe you were a little anxious or a little unhappy or something, but whatever reason you said it, there would have been a reason even if 8 year old you didn't understand it. Maybe just to get a day off school then it all spiralled. Truly, please don't give this another second of worry. You sound so lovely Xxx

I pretended to have whooping cough when I was about 8 years old. One time I breathed in quickly before coughing and accidently made a whooping sound. It was quite funny so I did it a few more times, but when my mum heard me she took me to the doctor who diagnosed whooping cough.

I felt perfectly fine but it got me a lot of attention, so I never said anything. To this day I genuinely don't know if I actually had whooping cough or not.

So I done something similar at 8, I kept saying my foot was sore after having gone over on it, and it was a little, I’ve had sorer bruises, but it was definitely not as sore as I was making it out to be, this went on for 5 weeks, had lots of X-rays done in those 5 weeks and they said it was fine and finally they sent me to a specialist and turned out the bone on the side of my foot was completely broke off, I was in a cast for 12 weeks, I was NEVER so shocked when he said it was in fact broke! Hilarious!
I did tend to exaggerate injuries or fabricate sicknesses days here and there, as a child, whilst I had one parent very amazing, I also had one that had severe mental health problems and addictions - even though I have regretted different things, I don’t blame myself, I was just a child, I am an alright adult considering!

I went through a period of jumping off the bed and trying to land awkwardly in a bid to break my leg. I thought casts looked cool and I guess I thought I’d get lots of attention. I never quite had the balls to actually land badly enough that I’d snap the bugger though (luckily!) and my parent just saw a 7 year old having a jolly old time jumping on and off the bed. Kids are weird. I honestly get how you feel though because I still feel embarrassed about doing that and probably wouldn’t tell my parents. My sibling yes because they’d probably laugh but I feel like my parents would judge my 7 year old me and I don’t want them to (?!)

how bad did they think it was to still talk about it today? I’d just leave it unless you think they’d find it funny. If they’ve spent 20 years telling friends and family about how it felt to have a potentially very sick child however, just let it be - don’t make them feel party to a lie. It really isn’t a big deal. It’s done and you were 8!! (You may benefit from some therapy of sorts to work through this as you seem super impacted by it)

I kept telling my mum I had a sore throat so I didn't have to go to school. Obviously after so many sore throat's and so much time of school she took me to the doctors and they said I had glandular fever. I was told I had to stay off school for 6 months.
I didn't even have a sore throat and was diagnosed with something I didn't even have.
Don't get me wrong I was chuffed at the time because I hated school so much.
Since being an adult the guilt was eating me up and I had to tell my mum it was all a lie.
She wasn't over the moon about it, but she said it was so long ago that there's no point in getting angry after all these years lol.

Having read all this - my eldest son was off school,in a cast and on crutches for 6 weeks for an injury to his ankle that could not be explained - that caused me to argue with A & E drs as I caught them
googling his symptoms, saying a 13 year old knows pain when he has it.
subsequently causing hassle for his teachers to send work home for him and not believing there was enough work for him I then downloaded things for him to do at home - he recovered quite well and returned to school.
only for years later it to come out at the dining room table that he had in fact made it out to be much worse and the only reason he recovered as quickly because he was getting more work at home to do than at school !!! That child is now a lawyer !!

Does it help you to think what you learned from that lie? That your family really cared about you and worried for you, that you were listened to and believed? You were eight, you didn't know how far things were going to go, and then afterwards you were capable of learning from and reflecting on your actions so as not to repeat them. If that lie taught you anything, about yourself and your family, then it was not a bad thing.

Forgive yourself, OP. You were a little girl.

My mum used to lie about having a sore throat to get out of going to school and ended up getting her tonsils removed as a result! She fessed up though and laughs about it. I guess it's harder if it's something a bit more serious than faked tonsillitis though. Either way not worth stressing about now

If I’m honest I think it would take a hell of a lot for an 8 year old to lie for months and not be found out or at least someone be suspicious.

Memories are renowned for being unreliable, you should research this. I think there could be a relatively good chance you are misremembering this. I personally wouldn’t pay this to much attention.

when my brothers and I were in our early twenties one Christmas, we all had a glass of wine too many, and started confessing things we had done as kids.

Some were quite major to us but small in real life (my brother fessed up to eating the birthday chocolates that I had always been accused of eating)
But I had damaged my mum's new kitchen and she had made them replace the worksurface, and it was all my fault!!

Kids do stuff.
I am not sure I am reayd for the big confession time with my kids, need a few more years to pass .....

Let it go. I told lies at about seven about severe tummy pain. My dad bundled me up and took me to the doctor in the middle of the night! I don't know why I did it either. Maybe a child testing their strength?

I lied during my eye test so I could get glasses when I was a child. They didn't look as good as I'd hoped so never wore them anyway.

1000%. They don't need to know- telling them will just make you feel better and them worse.

Just forgive yourself. Your family may recall it but it obviously didn't amount to anything. So "coming clean" gains no one anything. Move on. Kids are weird. I had two separate similar occasions as a child.
One was fabrication. I just didn't want to go to school .
The other was a genuine innocent observation I made on my own body...but the way I told my parent, it could have appeared very concerning. I had no malice in that. As an adult I realise it was just my body functioning normally. But it was months of appointments for my parents. We don't need to talk about it, they only cared that I was ok.

Let it go, you were a child and they do/say daft things.

I did the opposite and never told my Mum I had been bitten by a dog on my upper arm, I was always being told not to touch random dogs but never listened. Can't remember how old I was but must have been bathing unsupervised so probably 8 or 9 (this was 1980's and we were left to get on with things younger in those days). Weeks later my arm was really infected, crusty, pus etc and when it was eventually noticed, I denied knowing anything about it. Dragged to the Dr. and again said I had no idea 😂.

Heading close to 50 now so probably should finally confess to my parents before it's too late!