How to explain pretend and truth to 5 year old?

[marchmom19]

It has not been an issue before but its starting to be. My 5 years old love to make up things about everything. That she has imagination dog, that she is pregnant with puppies, that she has 4 moms, so forth. Most one can tell is imagination. Now its getting to the part where its hard to differentiate between the two as she brings in more reality into her stories.

If she hurt herself, she doesnt tell me the whole truth of how it happened and makes up a story (not that she is hiding anything). Just part of her characteristic to tell story. (she will be a writer I think).

If kids are fighting and toddler comes tell me that big sis hurt her, but she didnt. I dont know to believe her or not either as she will tell me and demonstrate how toddler hurt himself. (Toddler will not always say right thing either ...blaming the dog bit him or sis hurt him when didnt on occassion I was witnessing event). So also hard.

Now my daughter who is in private preschool tells my sis (her aunt) that teacher hit her today. Oh boy. This is serious stuff. But my daughter is probably just doing her usual made up story and doesnt realize it is serious. So we talked to her tried to ask what made teacher hit her, where so forth. We were unprepared and not sure how to talk to her. Hubby started to say oh we have to call police now etc. I told him, daughter doesnt understand what police is yet and all that. We still have to explain things more simpler and then tried to ask her if she was telling us pretend story or real story. Asked if she understood between the two and gave her some examples. But we are not sure if she understands.

She ended up pointing to mosquito bite as where teacher hit her. (the past few weeks she will say that the bees are biting her when she has an itch).

I dont want to stop my daughters from her fantasy land but I want her to know the different between the two and how to tell us.

(Most times i dont even know what happens at preschool for day to day things as she makes up her stories. One time she told me there was a new student in her class... so I asked teacher the next day oh who is the new child. There was not new child. My daughter's fantasy friend. Just some example of her realistic fantasy).

Any tips? Hubby and I dont know what to do and yet dont want to scare her and all.

Thanks for tips.

[flyingspaghettimama]

oh, wow. That's some pretty serious business. Fantasy is all good when you're talking about being pregnant with puppies (!) but totally different when you say someone is abusing you.

Can you have a serious, sit-down discussion with her about what is real vs. pretend? That pretend things are imaginary, and soooo much fun, but when someone asks you "is this real or pretend" you need to answer truthfully, because it is important. We went through this last year when my daughter was four and came home with a story about her teacher locking her in a closet, but that was ok because she squeezed through the keyhole, got the key, and unlocked herself and went outside to play by herself. There are no locked doors at her school. I was ready to go ballistic until she got to the keyhole part.

In the car, we would play a game of "let's make up a pretend story" and then we would tell each other a "real story" regarding something that happened that day. And when she started telling me (on other occasions) some of her pretend stories ("today, at recess, Mike turned into a goldfish"), I would prompt her with "is that real or pretend..." and give her positive reinforcement when she admitted it was pretend. I.e. that's a very creative pretend story - can you tell me more of your pretend story.

Good luck! My daughter has a friend who swears up and down that she's been to the moon with her dad, and my daughter is very frustrated that I haven't taken HER to the moon. That was a long discussion...sometimes our friends don't know the difference between real and pretend.

[ajsmom]

My son gets all the injuries I don't witness from "falling off a tower crane" no matter how many ways I try to find out how it actually happened. Kids often make up stories to deal with something they see or hear to help them cope.

My sister used to talk to my nephew's kindergarten teacher to make sure the teacher knew how imaginative he could be because he would tell very real sounding stories that NEVER happened. Perhaps a chat with the teacher about her creative mind can give you some insight into the teacher's experience with this, it's so common, and the teacher's ideas about what she does during the day to determine what really happens when she isn't there to witness the goings on.