[AmyAnne]

Ugh.

So Austin has a friend who is either 12 or 9, she keeps changing her story. I'm thinking 12. We'll call her P. P's cousins (all boys. Ages 11,9,and6) live with her.


THe kids USUALLY play well together. But about every 2 weeks, after the kids have all gone home, P shows up at my door crying, telling me some awful thing that Austin's done to her. A lot of times it's something her cousin "M" who is 11 TOLD HER later that Austin said/did.

Today, she showed up during dinner, apologized to Austin for being rude and then in the same breath informed me that M told her that austin had called her a dirty name. She gave the first letter of the word and Austin looked genuinely confused until she spelled it out.

I have caught all 3 kids involved in lies before... so who to believe?

Went to talk to P's Mom. Evidently she believes P is without fault. I think they're all just feeding off each other. But the brunt of the drama gets transferred to me.

As for now, DH and I have agreed we know where P's Mom stands. We know where we stand (for the record neither DH nor I believe Austin called her this name. I would believe a lot of stuff from him, and 99% of the time we know when he's lying My guess is M made it up to rile up P) For now we've all agreed to let the kids work it out, enforce "Breaks" when need be. ("There seems to be a lot of disagreement lately. I think you all need to take a 3 day break from playing together".)And if there's a serious allegation, sever ties entirely for both kids' protection.

UGH

[mrsred]

Sounds to me like P likes to be a tattle tale and you are taking the best route by letting them work it out themselves.

[momraine]

We have lots of talks about the difference between telling and tattling. If someone is doing something where someone could get hurt, then that is telling, but if they are telling me something for the purpose of getting the other person in trouble it's tattling. We do lots of roll playing and make a game of me telling things and they have to tell me if it's tattling or telling. So when they come to me, I ask them which it is. We talk about, how could someone get hurt by what is happening, and I always ask if they are trying to get the person in trouble. We also talk about ways we could handle things. (of course my daughter gets around it saying they are going to get hurt because she is going to hit them if they keep it up, LOL)