My 3.5 yo is lying about other kids - help?

[beth568]

I know that playing with the truth is part of this age (3, almost 4). My DD will often lie about silly things - for example, we'll be in the car and she'll blow a big raspberry and then tell me, "That wasn't me, it was the baby" or some such thing. Or she'll scatter a big pile of stuffed animals around the floor and tell me the dog did it. That kind of thing doesn't worry me too much.

But, lately, she's been fabricating one kind of story that could be a problem. She'll tell me that the kids at school, or the playground, or whatever, were mean to her - that some of them hit her or called her a bad girl or said "not nice" things to her. The thing is, she'll tell me this after I know nothing of the sort has happened, because I've been in the room or within earshot the whole time. The other day, she told me that her friend Stephen (a very gentle kid, with whom she tends to get along well) hits her "all the time." It's just not true - she sees him either at preschool (where the teachers are quite conscious of that sort of thing and would tell me if there were a problem) or during playdates when I'm present.

How can I help her to understand that it's not a good idea to cry wolf about this sort of thing? That it's really not nice to say someone hit you if he didn't, and also that it's important for me to understand when something like this really DOES happen?

BTW, I think perhaps part of the idea comes from a book she has in which the main character's schoolmates tease her about her hat...but still, how to handle it?

[USAmma]

Lying is a developmental milestone of the 3-4 year old. Relax. It's normal. Pretty soon she'll develop a sense of "pulling your leg" humor that will replace the lying.

When I posted about the same thing a few mos ago I was given the excellent advice of not confronting the act of lying, but instead either ignore it, or talk logic. Like just smile and laugh and say "Oh come on, it couldn't have been your sister! Are you telling Mommy a silly joke?" Or about the boy hitting her: smile and get down to eye level and say "Stephen is such a nice boy. He didn't really hit you, did he?" and then give her a hug. And then drop it.

Abi is now becoming a little jokester. The other day she had me going. She told me she peed her pants just as we were pulling into CostCo. I was like, "What, are you serious? Why didn't you tell me you had to go?" Then she smiled and said, "JUST KIDDING!!"

[stafl]

I'd make absolutely, positively certain you know it's not the truth before taking that approach. I probably should have ignored this thread, but something in it reminds me how nobody believed me when I tried to tell them my father was hitting me...

My 4yo has never gone through that "stage" of lying about things like that. I take hitting very seriously, and maybe she just knows how upset that would make me. But it might be a preschool thing (we are homeschooling, and so my kids play with children of all ages instead of being sequestered with a group of kids all the same age, and parents are always there with them). Maybe she's hearing someone else say that sort of thing, or learning to lie from other little kids.


edited.... well, yeah, I guess she did go through a stage right after she turned three where she would tell these untrue stories, but they weren't really lies, it was more of a teasing, joking sort of thing like DH does rather than a trying to trick someone into believing something that isn't true.

[chel]

my dd does alot of the kidding joking, but has been on the receiving end of "false tattling". dd had a friend that would always tell me how my dd was doing all these things wrong. dd wouldn't say much and I always believed the other dc. Recently we got together with the dc and their older sibling, the older sibling would always step in and tell me that my dd was not doing it. I didn't know the younger dc had a habit of this behavior and now I feel so bad for my past behavior to dd.
Just the other day I was at an indoor play area and saw 2 moms and a group of kids, one family was a group of 5 girls that were telling the other mom that her 2 sons were doing something wrong (I didn't catch the whole thing). As soon as I could find my dd I asked her what was going on and to make sure she felt safe. She said the girls were picking on the boys and that she tried to tell the boys to just ignore the girls (what I tell her to do in "bad" situations, family trait of butting in on other people's life ). I saw the boys' mom getting upset with the boys later. I'm sure many would think i'm a nut , but I did go over to the mom and tell her that my dd reports that her sons were not in the wrong. She seemed happy to know and we talked briefly on how it's hard sometimes to believe your own child.