teens with a fantasy life -- is it a problem?

My daughter has this new friend, and I'm beginning to suspect that
she's the kind who lies to make herself seem more important. I'm not
sure yet because so far the stories are believable, but something just
sets my bull-o-meter off.

I knew some of these kids when I was in high school. One girl
maintained for several years that she was a vampire. She gave all
appearances of actually believing this, and she maintained the ruse
even after going away to college.

The son of a friend of the family started a new job, and made up all
kinds of stories about his rich, important family, and why he was
"slumming it" in the job. When my sister started working at the same
place, he realized she would "out" him, so he began spinning a whole
new web of lies to try to keep anyone from saying anything to her, and
to discredit anything she might say if they did. Of course,
eventually someone did, and she did indeed expose him.

But the worst I knew was one of my best friends. Her stories started
out believable -- this guy in a club she attended liked her, she
hadn't been feeling well, one restaurant had mob ties (which was fun
at that age even if we didn't believe it). But over time they got to
be more fantastic -- *two* guys in the club loved her, prompting a
fight and one of them rushing out and crashing his motorcycle and
hovering between life and death, she was actually terminally ill, but
no one was supposed to know, and oh, yes, she had witnessed a mob
murder, and was being forced to work as a messenger for the mob or
they would kill her.

I, of course, got more skeptical as time went on, but even after I
came to the conclusion that none of this stuff could possibly be true,
I still went along with the stories for the fun of it. Unfortunately
our other friend bought everything she said, hook, line, and sinker.
She *believed* that this girl was going to die. She *believed* that
we were all being tailed by mob spies. But ironically the most
hurtful story was the most mundane.

Supposedly the liar's next door neighbor had a grandson who lived
locally and visited often. She said they'd been friends since they
were kids, and would talk about him often. "He" started writing notes
to us, which we would respond to. Eventually "he" and gullible friend
started a flirtation, and she came to consider him her boyfriend.
Liar friend arranged for this guy to meet us at the mall on several
occasions, but he never showed. She always had a good excuse, and had
also come up with elaborate reasoning as to why he could not talk on
the phone.

By the second time he didn't show up at the mall, I'd decided he was
another of her fantasies. Over time I became more concerned about
gullible friend and how emotionally attached she was to this fantasy
person. I finally put my foot down -- called liar friend on all her
lies, and challenged her to come up with one single piece of evidence
for any of this. All the stories stopped, and I thought it was over.
But months later I found out that she and gullible friend were still
living the fantasies, only now they weren't telling me about it.

Gullible friend ended up really hurt, and even now at age 43 will say
things like, "I tried looking him up in the annuals for the school he
was supposed to go to, and couldn't find him." I'm flabbergasted that
she still believes even a little.

Okay, sorry it was so long. The question is what, if anything, do I
do? I don't *think* my daughter is the gullible type, but she could
get drawn in. And if I am too vocal with my skepticism, she'll just
stop telling me things. I thought about talking to the girl's
parents, but that seems like it would do more harm than good. Maybe I
should just not worry about it and realize that my daughter is likely
to run into several of these kids throughout her teen years?

Thoughts?

Bizby

bizby40 wrote:

Okay, sorry it was so long. The question is what, if anything, do I
do? I don't *think* my daughter is the gullible type, but she could
get drawn in. And if I am too vocal with my skepticism, she'll just
stop telling me things.

I think one of the best things you can do is just
tell your own stories. Don't bring them up in a listen-up-
and-learn-from-my-experience sort of way. Just work them
into ordinary conversations as an item of interest, and
resist the temptation to hammer home the moral of the story.
She might not react now, but it'll get filed away in the
back of her head and become part of that little voice that
pipes up when something sounds a little fishy.

Best wishes,
Ericka

I think this is one of those teachable moments. You talk to your
daughter about your experiences, and why people might do things like
that - i.e. feeling insecure and making up things to make themselves
more important, get attention etc.

I had a friend I met at a teen at summer camp who was like that. She
told all kinds of stories about her family, school, money etc. over the
several years I knew her (also saw her socially in town). She later
went to work at another camp, and helped me get a job there as well. I
always suspected she stretched the truth, but her lies didn't seem
harmful, so no one ever called her on them. I was the reason she got
"outed" and fired. The camp director had a conversation with me about
her one day - at the time, I didn't think much about it - just casual
questions about our friendship and he sort of worked in questions about
what I knew about her family etc. Turned out she had told a different
set of lies entirely to the camp when she was hired, and they were much
more serious lies - about her qualifications to run the waterfront
program etc. Twigged by the disparity between what I told the director,
and what she'd told him, he investigated, and turned out I knew about
zero that was true about her as well. Totally bizarre in every way. She
even lied about inconsequential stuff that no one would care about at
all.

One of those life experiences. Upsetting at the time, but a lesson
worth learning. And yeah, I have talked to my 15 year old son about
what happened, since he has broached the topic of braggarts at school
who have told what almost certainly are either outright lies or at
least major embroidery of the truth.

The lesson I took away from the Marianne experience was ....listen to
your gut. If there are alarm bells going off, there's probably a fire.

M.