Aaauuggggghhhhh!!! Delusional, completely delusional

[JJJ]

Eeyore is telling these absolutely wild tales. After the informational meeting for kids to join track, he came home and said that the coach wants him to be the captain. Um, no. The captains are seniors, not freshman. And being a captain is something you earn by working your butt off not be going to an informational meeting.

He keep insisting on crazy stuff related to his ROTC...."I'm getting a triple rank advancement." "I'm in charge of the entire freshman drill team" (not even on drill team anymore).

He used to come home and brag about being the 'dance champion' at the junior high dances and that was confirmed by his teacher. When Piglet got to the junior high and was able to see what happened at the dances, she said that Eeyore did the dance off against a teacher but would spend the rest of the dance hanging out near the teacher who was acting as dj. She thought is odd that he didn't actually dance when the other kids danced.

On one hand, I know his self-esteem is so in the gutter that he is telling these lies to try and make himself look better and his Aspergers is making the lies a bit more 'off' but he gets so devestated when he is called on them. And the other teens are calling him on them, they are sick of it. I don't blame them.

Developmentally, he really needs to be in a self-contained program but academically he is on the edge of mainstreaming so the school would never do that.

I'm not sure he is going to make it through high school without a psychiatric hospital stay, I really need his Abilify dose to get up to a therapuetic level. Maybe that will help.

 

[AnnieO]

Oh hon... I just saw this... for you, for Eeyore, and everyone else, too!

Jett does the same thing... And he is such a terrible liar... That it's an arrow straight through the heart when we call him on it. The kids at school hate it.

I don't have any fix or even advice, but I hear ya!!!

 

[buddy]

Q lies too but often thinks it is a "joke" like teasing... he just can't navigate that well. Other times it is defensive.... just thinks it will make him "look cool" and the stories are so absurd (and he always comes clean) it clearly does the opposite. such a bummer that it has to be such a struggle for them.

 

[southermama3]

I am so glad u posted this. Your post gave me a light bulb moment. difficult child 1 lies a lot also. She will pull out a 500 page book and say she read to page 90 in 30mins. She also will say "mrs b says you shouldn't make me read longer than 30 mins" or way in left field. Leaves me shaking my head.

 

[AnnieO]

SoMama... I'm chuckling because I can read that fast. However, mine is due to reading a LOT, and FAR more than 30 min at a time. Your difficult child is full of beans on that, I'm afraid!!!

 

[DDD]

difficult child#2 (AS) always exaggerated but once he reached his teens it became, most frequently, delusions of grandeur. As in your case his peer group either called him out or, most commonly, ignored him no matter how hard he tried to "fit in". Group activities (which I selectively encouraged) seemed to make it worse. In one service club group when the nominations for new officers was on the agenda he stood up and said "I will be the President." The teacher sponsor was a sensitive woman who was gobsmacked by that one. He was angry and depressed when he was given an inconsequential committee chairmanship and never contributed again. It's all so sad. DDD

 

[pajamas]

Huck has delusions of grandeur, too. He's said he's the king of the school. He's challenged his 6'1" dad and others much bigger than his 90lb. self. He really believed he could take them on. It's one of the reasons he's being treated for possible bipolar (well, that and the the time he jumped off the roof).

But I must say - I just checked this thread after writing an email to his teacher saying, "Yes, Huck did take a cruise in the Caribbean. And I suppose you could say it went through the Bemuda Triangle, although the ship was running from the storm rather than chasing it. So in general, I think it does count as a non-fiction personal experience story, unlike the one about the Holy Grail, so please grade it on the merits."

Delusions are different from lies, even crazy lies, in that our difficult children really believe they are true at the time. But I find it tricky to distinguish between delusions and other forms of imagination or immature thinking. Is it *delusional* that CeCe thinks she can be on her own and take care of herself at 14? It's unrealistic, but ... delusional? I think it's just what she wants to convince herself is true. And other times, the "delusions" can be what our difficult children hope we'll believe about them. Because they want us to be pleased with them so much. They know it's not true, but hope we'll believe them.

Sometimes, it's so hard ...

(hugs)

PJ

 

[buddy]

They know it's not true but they hope we will believe them.

I believe that happens a lot around my house.... he is so desperate to make himself not look "dumb" or like a baby or wants to avoid a punishment or whatever... and it can be really a goofy statement.

He also at times just comes up with an answer when in fact the answer could legitimately be "I dont know why I did it"

 

[InsaneCdn]

Interestng discussion.
We found that there was an inverse relationship between the extreme non-truths, and the degree of success in real life.
The more things went downhill in real life, the grander the non-real life became.
Lies? Delusions? something else? never really sure.
And that didn't change... until we solved some of the real-life roadblocks.
The more things improve, the less difficult child needs this non-true world to fall back on.

BUT... we are not dealing with mental illnesses (such as Borderline (BPD), Schitz, etc.), nor are we dealing with anything in the Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) range, no TBIs, and no drug/alcohol effects - either prenatal or by difficult child's choice.

 

[lovelyboy]

My son does exactly the same.......another reason in my opinion is their lack of creative thinking! Once my son had to write in school what they did during the holiday....he wrote he went to the circus......when I confronted him because he didnt go there.....he said he didnt know what else to write and the example teacher gave wise like going to the circus....
Last night me and hubby overheard his conversation with his friend....he said he had 3 big operations for broken bones....so not true! I ask hubby if he thinks its bad to lie like that....husband said....aghh leave him, in his mind this is his reality.....
And he will often brag with untrue facts, because he wants to look good.....
But I might have a discussion with him about this, BUT I dont think he will really "get it", because in his mind he is not lying....its against the rules and he gets VERY upset if some one lies......

 

[ready2run]

our difficult child lies alot too. he's only 6 though. he has to do journals at school and sometimes i look at them when i pick him up. not once has he ever written anything truthful in it. he writes about going on an icicle picking adventure when it's summer, last week he wrote about going on a bike ride to a city that is 2 hours from here. if i ask him about it he just crunches up his face and make a whining/screachy sound then refuses to answer me. so i don't ask. the teacher knows it's lies to, she askes me about them sometimes, if we really went to a frisbee contest or whatever. he will also lie about silly things, like eating all his dinner. he will hide the food then come to me and say 'oh, mommy, look! i ate all my yummy dinner!" meanwhile it is in his dresser. there's no need for that. i don't really care if he didn't eat all his dinner. i always discipline him and tell him it's not because of the dinner/journal/whatever it's because he lied to me. i can't seem to get it through to him either.

 

[JJJ]

Eeyore tried to make it right by meeting with the ROTC teacher. I met with him after and thankfully he gets that this is delusional (part of his MI) and not true lying which is against their honor code.

Eeyore seems to be enough "with it" that I can get him to see how what he says can't be true (although he remains frustrated that it is not true because he thinks it should be).

 

[pajamas]

JJJ, it's good that Eeyore is open to talking with you about the difference between his reality and the objective one. One of our struggles with CeCe's version of as-yet-undiagnosed Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)/Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) (waiting for the report) is that external life seems to be like a movie for her, where she can change the plot at will. I think the technical version is that she lacks a "theory of mind", where she understands that others have thoughts in their heads, that things can happen outside of her being there (hide the ball kind of stuff), etc., which is common among kids on the spectrum. She also gets extremely frustrated when things aren't as she tried to mentally make them.

Looking through the range of comments, though, it's important to understand there are very real, very major differences between the thought processes of 6-8 year olds with or without Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and those expected of a 16-y.o. A lot of the comments are frustrations with the little ones, who can be expected to engage in a lot of magical thinking. It's part of their development that they tell tall tales and try to get away with stuff. It's actually part of developing that "theory of mind" for a typical kid. Usually no need to punish, just let them know in a friendly way you caught them! Unless there's a safety issue of course. Usually they grow out of it. (Was it the bible that said age 7 was the "age of reason"? +/-)

PJ

 

[JJJ]

Gggrrrr....we have a 'safe room' that was originally built when Kanga was still here (so we had an escape shelter if she attacked) but now we have to use it to lock stuff away from Eeyore. I'm very sick today and when I got some tea out of there this morning, I must have left the door unlocked. husband just went to get something and realized that the pop he bought (special, because he needs the empty bottles for a project) is missing. Eeyore had stolen and drank them. husband was able to get the empties back so he isn't as furious as he would have been but still, I HATE having to live with so much stuff locked up; we pay $15 a month extra to have double parental controls on Eeyore's phone, we have to keep FOOD locked up -- heck, my Christmas present was a fridge to go in the locked room so that I could stock up on stuff when it goes on sale and not worry about Eeyore eating it all in one day (rather eating most and tossing the rest). I always make sure that there is plenty of OJ, rice milk, cereal, sandwich stuff, etc in the kitchen so it isn't a matter of Eeyore being hungry as we don't limit his access to food -- just to treats (pop, chips, etc)

I commented that when I was a kid, my parents never had to lock stuff up. Tigger replied "They didn't have an Eeyore". True, oh so true.

 

[svengandhi]

When I was a kid, I made stuff up. My family was very poor - we lived in the projects - but I was a scholarship kid at a private school. I used to make up stuff like vacations which we never went on, parties I never went to and similar.

I used to tell kids that my grandma was the Grand Duchess Anastasia and when I was called on it, I would say go ask her knowing she'd say anything I told her to. She was really a Jewish refugee from Russia.

I knew my stories were just that and maybe that's the difference - I told them because I believed my life was my business and I shouldn't be forced to share how poor I was.

 

[Marguerite]

Sveng - your grandma was Anna Anderson?

Marg