What's confusing? Cultured difficult child is MAJOR attention seeking. She sees some of the people I shoot with 3 times a year and she will literally hang on them when she sees them. And she doesn't know them from Adam, but of course, they treat her nicely and she revels in it.
And yes, a lot of [her] stories are to stay out of trouble. We'll get a story that blames mom. Mom gets a story that blames us. Teachers get a story that generally blames mom cause mom isn't the one that checks the stories out.
Things aren't good at mom's. She has spent the night with friends and that we don't know and she has told them she doesn't want to live with her mom anymore....
Shari--
You know I've been reading your threads about this child, and I'm not so sure she is "cultured" by her Mom's behavior. It's possible...but--
This child reminds me so much of my own difficult child. The stories!
Everything is somebody else's fault. The teachers constantly misplace her homework. (Yeah, right) Mom and Dad are the worst, most abusive parents in the world. Little brother does everything wrong and difficult child is always in trouble for it (Double yeah, right!) My daughter has caused some major family feuds by telling one relative one thing and one relative another.
My daughter, too--shows way too much attention to perfect strangers.
And I can't tell you how many times difficult child has told someone that things are so bad at home she just cannot bear to live with us any more.
And I can't count the number of times difficult child's lies have been blamed on me and my bad, horrible inconsisten parenting. "Well, she wouldn't lie this way if...."
I'm beginning to think that maybe BM is not all at fault, here. I'm also wondering if maybe all this child's stories are contributing to some of BM's strange behaviors (like being paranoid about the saddle and other issues).
I know there have been times that my difficult child has told such outrageous stories that other parents thought I was crazy for my reaction. For example, difficult child told me such stories about a particular friend, that when her family extended an invitation for difficult child to sleep over--I said "Heck No!". Well, they turned out to be perfectly nice, normal people when I met them later...and they confessed that they had been taken aback by my not letting difficult child particpate in their daughter's slumber party. I hadn't even known it was a slumber party! difficult child had made it out to be a three-day-weekend that the family wanted to spend with difficult child and difficult child alone. How bizarre is that?