fabrication. To call such stories "lies" would be worse than useless.
If scolding or preaching could make a child merely stop _telling_ such
stories, there would be no gain; if they stopped a child _thinking_
such stories, there would be a decided loss.

Gradually the child may come to recognize the difference between the
make-believe and the reality, and he may be helped. When at a
certain age you think your child ought to distinguish more clearly
between his imagination and cold facts, it would be all right to
explain to him that, although there is no harm in his enjoying his
make-believe, still he must not tell his fancies as if they were
real, but must tell them as "make-believe stories." That will
achieve the desired result without making him feel hurt at your lack
of understanding in treating him like an ordinary liar whose prime
intention is to deceive. But it is not wise to force this
development, even at the risk of prolonging the age of dreams.

With some children lying is caused by their esthetic feelings. It is
much easier for them to describe a situation as they feel it should
have been than to describe it as it actually was. Many children
"embellish the facts" without any trace of intent to deceive.
Although we recognize that what they say is not strictly the truth,
we must further recognize that it is their love of the beautiful or
their sense of the fitness of things that leads them to these
"exaggerations." It is the same sort of instinct as shows itself in
our love of certain kinds of fiction. We know that some of the happy
endings in the plays and in the novels are often far-fetched; but we
like to have the happy endings, or the "poetic justice" endings, or
the "irony of fate" endings, just the same. When the child makes up
his endings to fit his sense of justice or beauty, we must not