3 1/2 year old telling stories

[babygrant]

He has been telling stories that are way way way way exhagerated for a while now but today's "story" bothered me. He was eating breakfast and he said "mommy lit my legs on fire last night". I was a bit shocked and said "pardon me?". He said "you lit my legs on fire last night". I told him "I did not sweetie, it must've been a dream, nobody would ever light you on fire". He got really really angry and said "Yes you did mommy, you lit me on fire!!!". He kept repeating the same story when finally he said "that was a really bad dream". That story just really bothered me because what if we had gone out to the grocery store and he said to the lady behind him in the lineup "my mommy lit my legs on fire". Or we were at the doctors office and he told the doctor that. What do you do in a situation where your at the breakfast table and he says a story like that? Just do what I did? A part of me feels I did the right thing in THIS situation because the story was about me, but a part of me feels like I shouldn't have really said anything.

[nextcommercial]

WOW! I wouldn't let him out in public for a while. (just kidding)

What you CAN do, is go to Staples or anywhere they sell some school supplies and buy a drawing journal. They usually have a plain page on one side, and lines on the other. He can draw a picture of you setting him on fire, and you can write the sorted details as he dictates them.

This will allow him to have the story, you are listening and writing for him, then you can read it back to him.

It doesn't help you much. But, he sounds like he has a wonderful imagination and I would hate to miss out on his stories. Even though they are disturbing stories.

I have a daycare, and we do this. One day K wanted me to write about how his Dad threw two boys in a Garbage can at the baseball practice. It was very violent, and his Dad was kinda bothered by it, but K enjoyed making Daddy the playground hero. Turns out there are two boys at the baseball field who had been bothering K. K sorta wanted Daddy to put the naughty boys in the garbage. So, he worked it out in his story. It made K feel good, it made Daddy look like a roughneck, and Mommy and I laughed for days about it.

[babygrant]

Oh his stories are GREAT!! Excpe thtat one. He tells me stories about dinosours in his room that hide in his toybox during the day, monkeys taking his toys out the window, etc.

[katallen]

I think you would be okay if he said it at the grocery store or at the doctor's because there would be no scarring which there would be if you had set him on fire. I always tell dd that her story is very creative when it is far out there, sometimes she angrily insists that it is real and then I pick out a part like the flying horse and tell her in a happy voice "But it had a flying horse and horses don't have wings so that is how I know that it was an imagination story" and then she smiles and says something like "Oh yah." For the most part I don't worry about the reaction of other people, they have either had children and will understand or they haven't and there is nothing that will make them understand.