MY WEEKEND- Fibs and imaginary friends: Parenting my three-year-old

I once read that children go through a stage where they come up with these fantastic tales that they seem to believe is the truth.

Last weekend, my daughter, who is three, wanted to go outside, but couldn’t find one of her shoes. It was strange, because I had seen both shoes at that spot earlier.

“What happened to your shoe?” I asked, as I looked around.

“Si dogi ilikula…” she announced. No, she did not just say that the dog had eaten her shoe! I thought to myself. I stopped looking for the shoe and looked at her, my face already starting to crinkle with laughter. But there she stood, with a solemn look on her face, a look that said she believed what she had just told me. Just to be sure I had heard her correctly, I asked her again where her shoe was.

“Dogi ilikula!” she insisted, with a look that wondered why I was repeating a question I had already asked and got an answer to.

The problem though, was that we don’t have a dog, and have never had one, so there was no way a dog could have eaten her shoe. I eventually found the missing shoe under one of the seats later on in the day.

A few days ago, it was a Saturday I remember, I arrived home in the evening and asked her what she had done and who she had played with, only for her to tell me that she had played with “Posho.” I don’t know any of the neighbours’ children called

Posho, so I asked my son who Posho was.

“Posho? What is Posho?” he asked with a frown.

When I told her his sister had told me she had played with someone called Posho, he gave me a blank look.

And then on Wednesday this week, I called home late in the evening since I was working late. After asking her how school was, I asked what she had taken for supper, only for her to tell me that she had eaten colour blue and pink.

This is how the conversation went.

Me: “Have you eaten?”

Her: “Yes.”

Me: “What did you eat?”

Her: “Colour blue.”

Me: “I asked, what did you eat?”

Her: “Colour pink.”

At that point, I gave up and moved onto something else.

She started school this year, and there was this time I asked her what activities she had done in class.

“I coloured, I drink tea, I sleep, I play with dragon…”

The dragon bit did not alarm me that much though, because that immensely popular cartoon, Sophia the First, which she is fond of and which I am secretly fond of, sometimes features colourful dragons.

There is also this time that she announced she would not go to sleep because a chicken would eat her.

I once read somewhere that children go through a make-believe stage, where they come up with these fantastic tales that they seem to believe is the truth. If this is indeed the case, then I highly suspect that my daughter is at this stage.

Once in a while, she also tells fibs. A friend assures me though that this is normal at this age, and though it is reassuring, I am wondering how to nip the behaviour in the bud before it blossoms into something that will be difficult to contain.

Take this time she coloured on the wall (I saw her do it, mind you) but when I asked who had done it, she told me, face straight, that her brother had done it.

Or the time she insisted that she had finished her food, only for me to find her plate on the table, untouched, full of food.

Does any of you have a three-year-old? What’s your story?