Ana question...

[conuly]

I've long since discovered that she listens better if I'm holding her hands, or otherwise touching her. Otherwise she gets distracted and may even miss that I'm talking. (It's annoying. She asks "what?", and then she has to ask again and again because she gets distracted midsentence. I really dislike being asked to repeat myself even once, so I'm sitting there getting annoyed at her for my own issues.)

I've no idea what's normal or not, of course. So... how normal is this for a three-year-old child?

Comments

[conuly]

*grins*

At this point, I don't think she has the capability to actually lie. And I'm pretty sure this is normal for three year olds.

When she does try to lie, she's really really bad at it, for example, when she's snuck some ABC gum into her mouth, and she simply refuses to open her mouth at all. If she *would* open it, I might not even notice the gum in it! (Mind, I'm not telling her that.)

Her normal technique for getting out of trouble is to fess up, and then run away really fast or start fussing that she doesn't need a time-out (or to help clean up the mess, or to say sorry for hurting her friend, or whatever else it is).

[leora.livejournal.com]

The child I babysat would lie before the age of 3. He didn't lie convincingly. Doing things like saying I had done it for things that simply weren't plausible that I'd have any reason to do. I can't remember exactly, but things like having a bunch of his toys not cleaned up (yeah, I got out the toys and played with them myself) or eating the cookies where if I had done so, I could have just said so as I was allowed to, or putting stickers onto things that shouldn't have stickers on them.

So, I would expect the ability to lie to come pretty early on. Although obviously one datapoint isn't evidence. There have been recorded incidents of dogs lying, I find this funny.