Frustrated and Obsessed

A FRUSTRATED GRANDPARENT WRITES:

I am the full time parent of my four-year-old grandchild, Lindsay. Lindsay seems to lie incessantly. Almost everything she says is a tall story about something, which really infuriates me. No matter how much I scold her and give her consequences for lying, she seems to keep on doing it. Whatever jumps into her head she verbalizes it as if were the gospel truth. I don’t know what to do. It just makes me so angry.  What can I do to make her stop lying to me?

FROM RICHARD TO A FRUSTRATED GRANDPARENT:

Four-year-olds are the most creative poets. A child of this age and developmental stage has just developed the capacity to be creative with thoughts and words in relationship to the “truth”. It’s hard to know if you granddaughter is “lying” because she is simply experimenting with her new creative abilities or lying for the same reasons adult lie — to escape from the realities of the consequences of their behavior. Another unknown is how much Lindsay’s fantasy world is related to circumstances surrounding you having become her full-time parent. Her fantasies may be compensatory for the losses she may have sustained.

Should the majority of Lindsay’s tall stories be the result of innocent mental play with her new developmental capacities and not a mourning of a loss that she has sustained, you may yourself want to develop a creative approach   Make things easier for yourself as a parent and for Lindsay as well by reminding Lindsay, after one of her stories, that she is being very creative. An example might be “Lindsay, you really know how to make up good stories”.  You could even show some parental pride in her creativity. In time, this stage will pass. When Lindsay is lying to escape the truth behind the consequences of her behavior, remind her that you know what actually happened and continue to encourage her and create for her an atmosphere where she can be open and communicative with you. Should Lindsay’s fantasy world be part of a complicated mourning of a loss, professional help for her and for you to help her with this loss may be indicated.

THE MOTHER OF A BOY WHO IS OBSESSED WITH KNIVES WRITES:

My eight-year-old Nathan is obsessed with guns and knives, especially knives. He has begun to collect them. He begs me constantly to buy him yet another knife. He wants to handle even our kitchen knives. I have made every attempt to discourage my son’s interest in weapons, play that involves toy weapons, movies that exploit violence, even super-hero movies, and I have kept them from him and out of my house. These things are not attitudes or values that I want to maintain. However, this has made life with my son sometimes unbearable. We fight a lot, especially about Nathan wanting another jack knife. He recently has had bad dreams that wake him in the night. The theme is always the same. He says foreign soldiers are attacking our house and he wakes up frightened and disoriented. Because he has had these dreams, I now firmly believe that I must continue to oppose any violent theme, which I believe is the cause of his nightmares. Nathan is often angry and disrespectful to me. What can I do to improve this situation with my son?

FROM RICHARD TO A MOTHER OF A KNIFE OBSESSED CHILD:

Barring other issues that may be at play in your child’s and family’s life, aggressive thoughts and interest in weaponry and play that involves toy weapons is normal for boys of Nathan’s age. An interest in collecting things is also normal for grade school boys. When a parent, for seemingly good reasons, overly suppresses normal “aggressive” feelings in his or her child, those feelings go underground and the child may feel guilty and even unacceptable to his parent for having them. Your son’s foreign soldiers dream, I believe, represents his unacceptable aggressive feelings that he is unable, in his mind, to completely suppress to the satisfaction of his parents. They are, to your son, a bad part of him that attacks and compromises his relationship with you. This can be a very frightening concept for a child. The result is that he may become more fascinated with this subject in his conscious life and resentful toward you for not understanding.

There are a series of things that you can do to help the situation and Nathan. Nathan’s fascination with knives will not go away. The more you oppose it, the more fascinated he becomes. He needs you to understand and accept his, if you will, male aggressive parts of himself. Rather than completely oppose his cutlery interest, teach him how to safely handle knives, how to sharpen them, and in general how to be a responsible knife owner. Maybe you could even help him come up with a way to display his knife collection. Of course you must continue to monitor his behaviors with knives and correct and admonish any misuses of them.

These suggestions or similar ones convey to Nathan that you as a parent can embrace and hold on to all parts of him. This is enormously comforting and reassuring to a child. Your son needs this from you. As time goes on, his interest in knives and knife collecting may or may not continue but his obsession with them should diminish.  The outcome of parental acceptance of normal childhood expressions of aggression may eventually contribute to self-confidence and other successes in later life.