Has anyone else’s child relay events back to you where the new story they tell sounds like something social services would be interested in?

[justanotherneighinparadise]

It’s like my son takes a somewhat benign event, waits a few days or weeks then retells it to me ie. do you remember when X happened? But suddenly the story is peppered with a lot more drama, some stuff that never happened and a smattering of truth.

He’ll talk about the time daddy hit him with the iPad for example. I was in the room, it was a complete accident. But my son’s version is retold as though the scenario was abusive.

I’m genuinely concerned he’ll just say this stuff to his teacher one day and I’m going to get called in this common or a concern? He’s eight and we think on the spectrum but no diagnosis.

I’m sure they all do

My baby is too young yet to retale any horrors.
But we had our nephew for a week last year, took him out one day to various indoor activities , and there was torriental rain. On getting home we had to park a bit away from the house and all run indoors. On getting in we laughed at him and said ‘ we all look like drowned rats’.
That evening he FaceTimed his parents. They asked what he had been up to all day. Instead of the actual entertainment he said, ‘Aunty x and uncle x tried to drown me like a Rat’!

Yes. My father died when I was a kid. We’ve talked about it with the kids because obviously they don’t have a grandad.

“My grandad died” has evolved to “my grandad fell in the river and was talking to the fish and then a shark came and ate him”

I suppose at least the social won’t be on to me for that one

Mine's done this! Happily told me I've thrown things at her when she's dropped something, that I've pushed her over when she was running and had a tumble. I'm many things as a parent but can restrain myself that much! It's probably linked to their general testing of boundaries, seeing how far fiction and reality can be bent.
Worst one- busy high street, she scampers ahead trips over, I'm still a few feet behind "mummy you kicked me!" This was then repeated through floods of tears for several minutes, mortified!

It happens all the time. My friends in primary school joke with parents that if they don't believe everything said about school, they won't believe everything said about home.

(Obviously light hearted before someone later says this is obviously a sign of minimising abuse etc)

6yo DS has asd and does this a lot. It seems like he believes his version of events too. I have tried calling him out on it - one incident last week when he was merrily telling everyone I’d shoved him downstairs, I wasn’t even in the house! DH has seen what happened and he’d taken a tumble while messing about on the stairs. The more he talks about it, and the more time that passes, the more drama gets added.

Always being accused of some sort of abuse by my ds! Asda car park yesterday I caught his head with my hand when I was leaning over the trolley "OWWW YOU HIT ME YOU HIT ME MOMMY" 😳

My sister wrote it all in her school diary. My mum saw it on parent night and asked the teacher why she hasn't called social services yet and teacher responded that she knew what she was like......

DD1 got her finger trapped in a door I was closing while distracted by DD2. It swelled right up and an X-ray showed a tiny chip off a bone. I felt terrible about it, and still do. Not helped by DD1 saying over the years ‘do you remember when mummy broke my finger?’...

When my DS was little, we had to give him medication in a suppository. We told him this story one day as it was a bit funny, how we would pop it up his bum and he would do a surprised face he often talks about the time Mummy put something up his bottom it just sounds soooooo wrong!!!!

DH's ex wife took their little grandson on holiday when he was about 4, he broke his collarbone falling off a swing but she didn't realise and thought he was just being dramatic. She took him to the hospital the next day when it was obvious he was really in pain and couldn't move his arm, and he told the doctor solemnly 'nanny broke my bone and then made me go to bed because I was crying'. Even now he says to people "do you remember when Nanny broke my collarbone"

I was once taken aside by the school deputy head as they wanted me to have the official documented version of what happened one day at preschool, before I got the three year old version. The three year old version... 'I was left behind at forest school'. The actual version... She was at the preschool building with the majority of the class while a small group went to the forest area. She should have been with that group, but had accidentally been missed off the list. So an oversight error rather than a major safety breach.

Her best school trip ever was the one with the major crash on the motorway. Again, the(different!) school sent out reassuring messages before they got home they weren't involved. But they were stuck in traffic for two hours.

Oh god thank you, you’ve made me feel marginally better. Another thing just happened five minutes ago. A feather in my duvet has just scratched his face accidentally (I assume the quill was sticking out slightly).. Ive just heard him tell my DP what happened but I’m somehow now complicit in this alongside my bed 🤦🏻‍♀️

This is very common for SN children. Please be aware, let's hope the teachers have the common sense to believe you. Maybe you should preempt a disaster by talking to the Senco about Ds already doing this?

Ds (now 18) still recalls the time when he was 5 and I kicked him repeatedly in the stomach as he was lying on the floor. Dd who would have been 3 at the time of alleged event remembers it too. Dd who wasn't even born recalls it to strangers quite frequently

In reception, my son bought home this concertina style card booklet about their lives that they'd had to fill in. My son wrote that my mom never let's me have any food.

It all stemmed from not being allowed a chocolate biscuit before school!

Obviously, we've kept the art work for future posterity. He's still not allowed biscuits before school.

Or when he was a toddler and he hated his cot. He still says do you remember when you used to put me in that baby jail? He's 8.

My ds wrote about the 'time mummy hit me with her mobile phone' at school.
It fell out of my bag and brushed his cheek before it hit the ground

When we went to parents evening when DS was in the infants his teacher told us that during an RE lesson DS had told the class 'when we went for a walk my mum kicked my bottom but I turned the other cheek'!

No idea where that came from.

@justanotherneighinparadise I work in education, we are told interesting stories everyday and yes, we do take each at face value but there are procedures that we follow and we're certainly not straight on the phone to social services each time!

I’m sure I did the same when I was young! It’s horrible as a parent though hearing this stuff said back to you sounding absolutely horrendous and nothing like the original event.

My little boy went through a phase of telling anyone who would listen we had no food in the house despite the fact he regularly walked around morrisons and aldi with me. Luckily one of the nursery staff lives very near me and we would bump into her all the time so she knew we had food really!

My ds 6 is also on the spectrum and he does this.

Wandered out into the garden once to hear him relaying to the neighbours "...and then mum attacked us..." wtf?! Luckily they seemed to understand there was some artistic licence at play

My dd once told her teacher he dad had pushed me and ide sprained my wrist. Ss came out and were told the real story which was i had too much to drink when my mate pushed me in a joking way and I fell over and sprained my wrist. Dd dad was at his house with dd and didnt even know ide hurt myself until he dropped dd off the next day after ide been to a&e. They closed the case but we were both as to what shed put together.

My now 16 year old still tells how I forcibly held her down when about 8 and pulled her tooth out. Apparently she was in agony!
Reality; she had a very loose baby tooth hanging on by a thread. She wouldn't eat and wouldn't try and twist it out herself, so I asked if I could look. I picked it out with no force- it practically fell out when touched. But apparently I'm an evil torturer!

Oh yes the time my four year old told her teacher mummy had smacked her. (I don't smack).

The reality was that the day before this, myself, Dd, baby and Dd's paternal gran who we live with, had been to visit my own mother. DD left her stuffed toy there and demanded we drive back 45 minutes to collect it, major screaming tantrum. I said no and carried on with our evening. Literally that was it, the next day school called me in about it.
Luckily her gran had been present through the whole thing so someone was there to back up what I had actually said and done, but it really stressed me out as I was expecting social services at the door.