My son's friend keeps telling him fibs, tall tales, whatever you like to call them. He tells him things like I have those shoes too (about J's brand new crocs, which the friend does not have), I bought you a blue shirt so we can match, when we go camping my daddy takes pictures of bears. Those are the fibs from this week. Now I realize the friend is probably making up stuff to make himself feel better. I also know that kids don't always understand the difference between fact and fiction.
But what do I say in response to the tall tales, maybe if I was a more experience mother I would just ignore it. But the friend wears me out, he is quite needy and my children are not needy. I'm sure I should sometimes ignore it, but today I had to tell my son the truth that this boy was not going to give him a matching shirt. And sometimes my son tells me the tales when I'm tired and I find myself saying "that's not true" which totally catches my son off guard. Should I ignore, how should I response, part of me wants to teach my son the difference between truth and not truth, and doesn't want him to be gullible. But maybe gullible is a lesson for a future year. Any advice? On how to help a four year old who's friend is always trying to one up him.
On a side note, coloring overwhelms my son. He can't focus on a small part, he just sees the big picture and assume its too much work. He is much happier not having a picture to color. He also despised crayons all through nursery.
When I did childcare from home we were told not to give color sheets only blank pages to encourage creativity. He's just too creative :)
ReplyDeleteHow old is this friend? I've read that little children often tell fibs as a way of expressing what they wish were true. You could go with it, imagining ever more fantastical things ("I'm going to have a thousand matching shirts!" "Let's take pictures of a lion!") and acknowledging how much fun that would be, but at the end noting that it's just pretend.
ReplyDeleteI've also read that children can tell what's pretend (e.g. mice are not named Lily and they don't go to school) and what's not).
And maybe this boy has parents who fib to him: "if you'll just be quiet we'll go camping" when they have no intention of doing so. I've seen people do that and it's sad.