Storytelling.

"Once Daddy took me to Nashville," said Mary Jane to me earnestly, "and you didn't go."  This began a long, detailed account of the day Daddy took her to Nashville, the sights they saw, the fun they had, and how sorry she was that I missed all of it.

The story was a work of fiction, and very interesting to listen to.  Milo was upset.  "Mom!" he hissed.  "She's lying."

"She's telling a story," I corrected.  "Isn't it a good one?"

All three of my children have come through this period of storytelling, in which they recount long tales, some more plausible than others, about something that purportedly happened to them.  And I remember other children telling these stories too — my younger brother, I remember, was prone to tell stories about "when I was a grownup," for example.

  It's really interesting to hear what they come up with.  I wonder why?  I don't think they are lying exactly.  Nor do I think that they don't understand the difference between a true story and a made-up one — they have all gone through this at an age around three years old, when they are wont to accuse a sibling of lying about something, and accurately too.  I do think that they have trouble expressing the difference between a true story and a made-up story.

And I think back to the way we model storytelling.  We read them stories:  Frances and Little Bear and Peter Rabbit. Fanciful ones, and realistic ones.  And we tell them stories, stories about ourselves, stories that they have no way of verifying.  And we use the same word for it:  we read a bedtime story, and we say "Let me tell you a story about when I was a little girl."   How do they know what we're doing when we tell a story of what happened to us when we were children?  How could they tell that we are not making the stories up simply to entertain them?

I think when they launch into these tales they are not lying, they are not seeking attention, they are trying to participate in "storytelling" — as best as they can puzzle that out from the styles and genres of "stories" that grownups and older children tell them and tell each other.  They may not be sure what storytelling is, but they clearly know a good story when they hear one, and by now have some idea about what elements in a story will interest other people, and they stud their own stories with details to create them.  We don't verify our stories to them, so why should they feel a need to stress truth or falsehood?  We don't make much of a distinction between a true story and a made-up story, so why should they?