9Yr old 'lying' about her abilities at school.

[OrmIrian]

DD has spent the entire term in yr 5 so far telling DH and I how badly she has been doing, how she can't do maths, she's been moved down a literacy set, her spellings are really bad. We've spent a lot of time helping her, reassuring her, I offered to speak to her teacher as she was so worried, but she got in a panic about that so I didn't.

Parents evening - she's in top set for Maths and literacy (she was moved to the second table in the top Maths set which is what she meant I suppose). The teacher thinks she's wonderful, diligent, enthusiastic and an imaginative writer. DH tackled her about this last night when he came back from school and she burst into tears. We got no sense out of her.

Why would she do this? The teacher couldn't have been more pleased with her. What is going on?

Hmmm, interesting.

My dd is a little bit like this (she's in Yr 3) and at times seems convinced that she is no good at and hates Literacy. And yet she has always excelled in this area.

Is it lack of confidence? Does she feel she's being pushed and wants some reassurance?

Sorry, I'm not being much help really.

Maybe she is suffering from a bit of low self esteem.
Does she compare herself to the other girls all the time? Is the school quite pushy/do lots of tests?
Does she want to be in a group of friends, but feel like she can't quite make it in?
I don't think she is lying, it is probably a reflection of how she feels.
She may feel that if she is not the top at everything, then she has failed.
I would look at her friendship groups and what your and schools expectations of her are and make sure that she is not being put under to much pressure.
Some children are just like that and they convince themselves that they are bad at something for some really small reason.

DS1 (14) can be a little like this, constantly moaning that he's no good at his subjects. We've just had his monitoring grades, including predicted grades at GCSE. His predicted grades were all As and A*s, apart from two Bs. And he thinks he's struggling .

I do think it stems from low self-esteem and a little bit of attention-seeking.

Orm
my DS1 spentthe whole of his first year or two at a new school telling us he was doing OK.
Turned out he was quite extraordinarily bright but was trying to hide it from everyone. He was 7 at the time.
It took us a year to figure out what it was and it related to his desperate need not to be different. His brother has sN and we gained a lot of very unwelcome notice as he was growing up, This put him off being singled out in any way at all- even for being noticed in 'good' ways.
It was really hard to find out this is the effect those years had had on him.
I think he also felt a strange sort of survivor guilt that his brother regessed when he didn't. It was very hard.
Al we did was endlessly reassure him that we loved him and over the years he has gained his sense of self back and become much more confident.

I doubt this is the same but wanted to just share a similar experience combined with the notion that we did find out eventually what was going on and, more importanatly , we have been able to turn it around

Thankyou both.

I really don't think that DH and I pressure her. On the contrary. We are very easy-going when it comes to school work - I hate the idea of making little children stressed about school. I am torn between being delighted at her progress and perplexed/worried about her.

School is not really a pushy school as far as I can see. In fact it was in special measures for ages. The new teacher is quite a tartar compared to the wishy-washy one she had last year. But I must admit I thought the new teacher would suit DD down to the ground as she is a hard-worker unlike her big brother .

Maybe it's her friends. Could be.

btw I know that 'lying' is the wrong word but it was all I could think of at the time.

Sorry - thankyou all!

"I think she's worried that people will start expecting "great things" of her that she can't deliver. "

I think that is probably the root of it. But she is always delighted by praise.

pagwatch - your poor DS . Not a consequence I'd have looked for.

I went to parent's evening yesterday and was astonished to hear that the teacher had put dd1 in the top set for maths. I know that literacy is her strength, but dd1 is always telling me how bad she is at maths. When I queried the teacher's setting, she said that my LO is not the best in class at maths, but she does pick up concepts quickly and that is why she has set her there.

So when I got home, I did ask dd1 why she keeps telling me she is so bad at maths when her teacher has just told me that she is strong in the subject. She said that she does not enjoy the subject and does not like people saying she is good at it. She does like being praised for literacy because she enjoys and values it. As a family we are quite maths orientated, dh has a maths degree, I have a microbiology degree and am studying for a maths course at the OU, so we do value maths at home.