The BIG Lie

As you all know, children sometimes feel the need to fib, or make up stories or elaborate on certain things and tell people about them. Well, do I have a doosy for you all.

Last Friday I was picking the girls up from daycare and I was told by one of the teachers about something Alex was telling everyone, and it created a major scandal! She was telling her teachers about how Ben was moving in with his girlfriend and her kid in an apartment across the street from daycare. They didn’t believe her but because she told it so convincingly, they started to think it was true. So they wanted to have an “intervention” with our family to see if they could “help” with anything. Because they thought we were such a great “Christian” family we needed their support.

OH MY GOD. Imagine my surprise when said teacher approached me with what she had been saying and the look of shock that crossed my face. I was pretty amazed at what a story this was that she concocted and the only thing we can think of is this is happening to a friend of her and she was repeating the story. So I obviously had to convince this teacher it isn’t true, which she was so glad but because people talk, it had gotten around to all of the teachers, the director of the daycare and the front office staff. Lovely.

So needless to say, I had a “talk” with Alex on our way home but I was so pissed. She started bawling and I told her she had to tell her father about what she said because it was a lie about him. She ran into the house, took one look at Ben, started to bawl uncontrollably and hid in her bed. Ben had to coax her down and calm her down, and I finally had to tell him what happened because she was too scared.

By this time, I was starting to see the humor in the situation. But what to do about the actual lie so she understands what she did was wrong? I decided the consequenses for her action was to write an apology letter to her teachers and give it them come Monday morning.

So now everyone is "relieved" that this isn't true. However now the teacher feels she needs to tell me everything Alex is saying just to see if it's true or not because she doesn't trust her stories anymore. Which is fine, but now I feel like I have this lying child when this is so not the case. Alex is pretty mature for her age...but sometimes it's hard to distinguish the truth from her wild imagination......oh well.