Hi all, I have had a good friend since childhood and our families are close too. However my friend is an exaggerator, sometimes the ‘stories’ involve me but I have learnt to not feed into it or simply say ‘i don’t remember that’ or something like that. I thinks its for shock value. Anyways we have teenage daughters who are the same age and are good friends also, her daughter also has this trait. She is either exaggerating or at times blatantly lying. My daughter is very mature for her age and is able to pick up what she is doing. We have had conversations about how to handle it. It is causing my daughter to not believe anything she says and questioning things that have impacted my daughter greatly in the past (think so and so said this about you) and causing issues within their friendship group. Her daughter (who I love dearly) is one who is always creating/in drama or has an issue. I’m just not sure how to move forward as its becoming frustrating and upsetting for both of us and their mutual friends. Should i approach my friend (the mum) or encourage my daughter to question her friend or call her out? Any advice?
4 Replies
I tell my daughter to distance herself from anyone like this. You need to put distance there between them and get your daughter to tell her not to involve her. Try and keep them apart and not so much time together. She will bring your daughter down.
There's a difference between someone who harmlessly tells tall stories or exaggerates a bit and a person who deliberately lies to create social rifts and drama.
Your friend and (or at the very least) her daughter fall into the latter category.
Distance and very firm boundaries are the only things that work with people like this. I have unfortunately learnt this lesson the hard way!
Calling them out doesn't work, liars usually tend to be master manipulators which makes them pretty good at gaslighting themselves out of a jam.
Ignoring or humouring the lies doesn't work either because they think they're getting away with it, then they get bolder with it.
My MIL does this too and is also a very manipulative person because she twists narratives to suit herself. Does your friend do it to make someone look bad or to make something a much bigger deal than it was? If she does run a mile. If not then I wouldn't be too stressed about it, some people are great story tellers and I think its also an ADHD trait to exaggerate. As for daughter, whenever my kids tell me that someone told them what someone else said, the first thing I say is, "Why did they feel so comfortable saying that to them?" To put the focus on the messenger rather than the person that apparently said that.
I was that child and "embellished" the truth with little tid bits of untruths. It's purely a personality trait and it's taken years of councelling to teach myself not to do it. Its about feeling importent snd being the centre of every ones world.
What made me realise how bad I had gotten was being assaulted at 15, and my own family not believing me.
I'd personally tell my child to keep her at arms length. Her stories may get Ur child in trouble one day.