The Tale of the Fork and the Spoon

Annie has a great imagination. She can keep her and us entertained for quite some time with her tales. However, sometimes her imagination is just a wee bit too close to the truth and/or she is using her tales to get something she wants. (My mom said I could have chocolate for dinner!) One might even call it lying.

I’ve thought a lot about how to deal with this. I don’t want to squash her fantasy life, which I think is spectacular, but I do need to address the comments from her teacher and her friends that Annie can’t quite be trusted in what she says.

My current strategy is to let Annie tell any tale she wants, but when another person asks, either adult or child, if that is true Annie MUST then say if the story is made up or not. When Annie explains (on questioning) that the story is just in her imagination, I reinforce the behaviour with comments like, “What an interesting story and tell me more!”

I’ve filled the teacher in on my plan and she is going to give it a try at school. We’ll see how it goes.

I do want to be very careful with this, though, as sometimes made up stories are simply awesome.