Ben is our creative kid. He loves to make things up and tell stories.  Lately, though, we have to often ask ourselves when we should let him create and when we should bust him for lying.

Last night we were getting ready to play a game on the Wii and Ben decided that he wanted to play a different game. When I told him that we had already selected the game he said "that's okay I'll just go upstairs to my room. I have a Wii up there". I said to him "you don't have a Wii in your room", to which he replied "yes I do, my friend gave it to me last week when he was here. I play it every day. "

We all just smiled and chuckled at our little man's imagination. As I mentioned before, Ben has a fantastic imagination and will often tell stories that are tall tales. My question in today's blog is...when do I draw the line between using his imagination and telling lies?

Last week I asked him if he'd washed his hair while he was in the bathtub. He got out before I had a chance to go in and do it myself. He proclaimed that he did indeed wash his hair. Of course, I knew he didn't because his hair was still as dry as it was when he went into the bathtub. I call him out on this and told him that I knew that he didn't wash his hair. He continued his lie and told me that he had washed his hair with a special kind of magic soap that dries his hair right after he washes it. He tried to refuse to let me wash his hair "again" because he had already "washed" it.  

In that case I knew it wasn't just his imagination but rather a lot he was telling to get out of washing his hair.

I absolutely love that he has such a great creative mind. He thinks in pictures, he's a fantastic artist, and he loves to make up stories. Those are qualities that I'd like to continue to foster.

So how do I let him foster his imagination and tell his tall tales but also not let him get away with lying? When do I call him out on it and when do I let him just pretend?