Think my 8.5 yr old is telling extreme lies

[iloveyoubutilovememore]

My bright, very funny and curious 8 (soon to be 9) year old son has been having a very difficult time at school. He continues to tell us how much he hates it and compares it to prison. He has never particularly liked it, and often asks to be home educated. He struggles to form and maintain friendships and has recently made comments like ‘when will this end’. Both me and my husband have to work, although given the recent challenges I have asked my manager to reduce my hours in case I decide to deregister him from the school.

Along side this, he has been coming home and telling us that a boy he used to be friends with, has been bullying him and hurting him. Obviously we took this seriously and I informed the school, who knew nothing of these incidents and encouraged our son to find a teacher should anything bad happen again. I also spoke to the boys mother as I thought we were friendly. She said she would speak to her son and apologised profusely. Fast forward to today, my son goes into school fine. I collect both my boys from after school club, and immediately he starts sobbing in the car telling me that this boy had kicked him in the shin and told him to get lost. I wondered how much of this is true given the schools observations, he adamantly denied lying and cried even more. I then (stupidly) messaged the boys mum again very kindly and politely to ask her to have a word with her son and that obviously I wasn’t there so can’t be sure that these events happened. She responded very aggressively and accused me and my son of harassing her and her child. I haven’t responded to her.

This evening has been absolutely awful, both me and my boy crying and me now questioning why I haven’t just pulled him out of school. I will be keeping him off tomorrow and going into the school to see what they can do to support. I’m also wondering whether I need to look into a child psychologist. To add - we are on the wait list for adhd and autism assessments.

If you’ve been in a similar situation, please let me know if there’s anything that helped.

What makes you think he's lying? Sounds like normal behaviour for a kid being bullied and bullies parents are rarely helpful/nice about it.

Have you considered moving school?

Your son Sounds very very unhappy whether or not he is lying

Have you ever considered he may have autism or ADHD? I just ask because school refusal is a symptom but also kids with this can be extremely sensitive to perceived slights (RSD). Sometimes an accident could happen like bumping when walking past each other and the child with ND could perceive they've been intentionally shoved. It's not lies, it's how they perceived what's happened to them. Our job is then explaining that not everything is intentional, explaining differences between intention and accident etc and making them feel more secure. This helps ease the RSD.

Obviously not enough info to go on but worth a thought rather than jumping to him intentionally lieing.

I’d start from a point of accepting his reality. Don’t involve the other parent. No one wants to acknowledge that their child is unkind. But you do need to talk to the school about how unhappy he is. Does he have an EHCP? Get any extra support? Are the school offering him things like nurture sessions, Lego/art/play therapy, interventions to support with social communication..?

I'd speak with after school staff rather than the parent directly, and his teachers again too. Or Senco. If your son has been struggling with friendships for a long time, I'd want to find out more about what happened and how events developed.

I find your friend's response curious too, why go from apologising profusely to accusations of harassment?