Does any one else's difficult child do this?

[PatriotsGirl]

Mine has a habit of coming up with devastating stories when she is in trouble. One time I was bringing her to the police station because she had just been busted stealing alcohol from us and giving it to a friend, on the way she was crying and told me she was raped when we were on vacation. This seemed to come out of left field and I was devastated. Something just didn't seem right though and when I checked her cell phone records, she was on the phone the entire time this supposedly happened. And when I checked through her phone there was a picture of a boy on there with his pants down while we were on vacation. My belief is that she lied to make me feel guilty so she wouldn't get in trouble. Now, yesterday she was sitting on the couch crying and I asked her what was wrong and to talk to me. She said everything was wrong and she needed to see a counselor. I thought, this is it!! She is hitting rock bottom!!! No, she tells me she saw two of her friends get shot last week and she cannot get the images out of her mind. Huh?? Well, went surfing trying to find info and I cannot find a single thing saying that anyone was shot last week, especially in the area she claimed. This is downright scary. Could she be trying to manipulate the situation (which doesn't surprise me at all), or is she psychotic?? Does any one else's do this??

 

[hearts and roses]

I don't want to just brush it off as simple manipulation because there could be more to it.


However, my difficult child told the most fantastic stories ever since she was tiny and first learned to speak, really. In Kindergarten, she forgot to bring something for show and tell. So, when the teacher called her up, she pulled back her bangs where underneath she had an extremely large bump from a mosquito bite and told her class that I had run her over with the car! TWICE!!! The school psychologist called me at work - I just fell to pieces as this was my worst nightmare (little did I know, worse was yet to come!).


I do think that if her tall tales are chronic, it should be addressed in counseling. My difficult child's chronic lying and tale telling ruined many of her friendships over the years, destroyed trust from family and friends and educators as well. It is a serious issue, but I am not so sure it makes her psychotic. Best of luck!

 

[Bean]

YES. My daughter does this all the time. I think it is a way of shifting blame and shifting the spotlight from her. I'm not saying that what she's said is always untrue, but like you said it comes at inappropriate times. Beaner has always got an excuse for why she does something. Excuses don't justify behaviors, though. I don't know if it is a psycho thing either. Or if it is a personality issue. I hope and pray my daughter grows out of it. It makes her nearly intolerable.

 

[PatriotsGirl]

Oh, she has always told TALL tales and the worst ones seem to come at the times she is in real trouble. She has told people sooo many stories that are completely untrue...I think I know my answer here and my husband sees right through her. Yes, should definitely be addressed in counseling - once she is in counseling. I am trying to find a residential facility that specializes in dual diagnosis and I don't even know where to start

 

[AnnieO]

The tall tales appear to deflect the spotlight from Onyxx. I listen with a grain of salt in my ear... And rarely bother to check unless it seems truly important. I just nod and smile a lot, and then return to the original subject.

...Okay, so X happened, that doesn't excuse you from doing Y and Z.

 

[janebrain]

Yes, mine does too. And she does the same thing--crying, carrying on, etc. A couple months after she was home from her Residential Treatment Center (RTC) she was out and she didn't come home when she was supposed to. Now, before the Residential Treatment Center (RTC) that would have been no surprise but she had been behaving pretty well since she had come home. She finally did get home a few hours late and was crying and told me she had been raped.

Well, now it seems stupid that I believed her but at the time I bought the whole story. We took her to the hospital, she saw a detective at the police station, showed him where it happened, etc. But after an investigation the detective dropped the case and was very clear that if you lie about something like this you can get in trouble with the law. I was so upset--this supposedly happened the day before her 17th birthday. As time went on I began doubting the truth of it and little pieces came out--like she had been drinking and went off with some boys in the woods, etc.

Then, a couple of years later she supposedly was raped again. We took her to the hospital, etc. and the police officer involved this time took aside and told us that the story she told was impossible--she would have had to climb a wall way taller than herself, lots of stuff didn't add up. I'm not sure why she was saying she was raped--at the time she lived with her boyfriend. She wasn't in trouble with us--maybe she was in trouble with him.

Anyway, I empathize with you. Counseling never helped our dtr--she was in an Residential Treatment Center (RTC) at age 16 and a dual diagnosis rehab at age 17. She also did years of outpatient counseling. She was awfully good at snowing her therapists, I will say that much.

She is now 22 and still lying--but she lives a long distance from me and most of the time it doesn't really matter. I did get caught up in her drama recently--it is easy to get sucked back in when you think maybe this time it is different.

Hugs,
Jane

 

[susiestar]

Even when I can see the reason WHY the person lied it still doesn't make sense to me. I just cannot grasp why difficult children make up such huge lies. I have one family member who told us about a rape that had happened while this person attended a Catholic school. By a certain priest who HAS raped the children at this school during the time period this person attended it. This priest made international news as part of a number of priests who were all caught and convicted around the same time in the OH/IN/KY area. This person DID know victims of this priest. Of course this rape came up when the person was in trouble. The person begged and pleaded for several of us to not tell anyone else under any circumstances. We each got a different version of events and even a different age when it started and stopped. Many years later the card was played again to someone who did not keep it a secret, but instead tried to rally the closest relatives to support and help this person. THAT is when we learned the stories were very very different. We also learned from another family member that the "victim" had bragged about lying about something "truly huge, enormous, guaranteed to get me off with-o any punishment from anything". I was not that family member but was the only one who believed that family member. A few years later the "victim" fessed up to the lies as a way to excuse very bad actions. The "victim" had the nerve to tell us that the lies caused so much guilt that these other bad actions were done both as a self punishment and as a distraction from the "constant guilt".

Of course once this person confessed it was instantly forgiven and never to be mentioned again.

I don't think I will ever really understand this kind of thing. You have to be a current difficult child to understand it. in my opinion anyway.

 

[TerryJ2]

No, my son's social skills are too poor to come up with-stuff like that. He used to do that a lot when he was little, but the last time, when he hid matches and a burned pencil in a drawer in the corner of the LR, (or was it more ladies' panties?) was the last time he tried a whopper lie. And he knew it. When he gave us the reason for hiding it there, our jaws dropped, and then we burst out laughing and outright told him how stupid of a story that was.
"I knew you would find it there, so that's why I hid it in that spot."

 

[JJJ]

Do your best to get "professional" documentation of her wild stories, lest you find yourself as the villian in one and need a defense.

 

[mog]

My difficult child has been telling so many stories -we can't keep track. He told the life teen coordinator that he and I were fighting and I kicked him out so he had to live under a bridge. The coordinator called me apologizing-- he knew difficult child was lying because he had been with him all afternoon and I had been at home (by the way we had company that night that later had to defend me that I had not knicked him out) Oh Yeah and we live in a small town and there are NO bridges that he could have lived under. His school case manager really called him on a lot of his stories and then would call me to let me know the newest story he had come up with. He currently is in Residential Treatment Center (RTC).

 

[PatriotsGirl]

She sent me a link to the news story of two hispanic males in their 20's found dead in a ditch. Police won't say how they were killed and there was a phone number if you had any information. So, I was going to call the police and let them know I had an eye witness for them! Yeah, she ended up admitting she lied and she was not happy about having to admit it. Actually called ME a dumb ahhh - her words exactly. I said, no, I knew you were lying and got you to admit it, dumb ahhh.

 

[TerryJ2]

Playing with-fire there ...

 

[klnsc]

When my son was in 1st grade, he had the teacher and class convinced he could speak Japanese. She would ask him what certain words were and he would read them like he was reading a regular book. I didn't realize this until our first conference and was flabergasted! He's 11 now and sometimes he'll tell me a long, detailed story, answering all my questions and then out of the blue he'll say, "oh, nevermind, I was only kidding... that didn't really happen..." It's very frustrating be/c I believe every word of it and really get into the story only to find out it's not true.