What if the behavior you’re struggling with isn’t defiance or poor choices, but the brain working differently? Join Barb Clark for FASD: Behind the Behavior. We’ll tackle lying, raging, impulsivity, anxiety, repeated mistakes, and “knowing better but not doing better.” You may walk away seeing behavior very differently. 1 out of 20 kids have a Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. Let’s dig in!
The speaker greets viewers, describes the setting, and introduces the discussion topic: distinguishing lying from confabulation in kids and people with brain differences. She frames the issue and previews that confabulation may often be mistaken for lying.
The speaker defines confabulation as the brain filling memory gaps with incorrect information, explains that it's common in toddlers and some neurodivergent individuals, and contrasts it with typical lying.
The speaker tells a detailed anecdote about her daughter who claimed a stolen phone belonged to Justin Bieber, describing how the story became more elaborate under parental pressure and how it illustrated confabulation rather than intentional lying.
The speaker compares confabulation found in Alzheimer's and dementia to everyday memory disagreements, shares another personal childhood confabulation, and lists common triggers like anxiety, being in trouble, fitting in socially, and memory gaps.
The speaker promises a future session about strategies for responding to confabulation, invites comments and questions, and mentions coaching for parents on non-punitive, relational parenting approaches.
Hey everybody, what's up? It is, what is it? It's Monday afternoon. Monday afternoon coming to you from Florida. I'm sitting out in my lanai. Boy, the weather is getting nice down here. We finally got rid of the crappy humidity. Anyhow, today what I wanted to talk a little bit about is I wanted to talk about lying. People that lie, kids that lie, liars. Or what I want to challenge some of us to understand is that sometimes Often obviously people are lying to us, but a lot of times it might be something else called confabulation.
Isn't that a big silly sounding word? Anyways, this is something that in the journey of us with parenting our daughter, we had really struggled with that when she was younger because, okay, first of all, let's talk, what is confabulation? We all know what lying is, right? Confabulation. is when our brains fill in the gaps of our memory and comprehension with wrong information and make us think that it's true. Very, very typical for toddlers and small children to confabulate. Super developmentally appropriate.
But as their brains develop and grow, they stop doing some of the goofy confabulations that they can do. Now, all of our brains confabulate. If you have a significant other, have you ever had one of those arguments or moments with them where you're like, I told you this and they're like, no, you didn't. You go, yes, I did. And they go, no, you didn't. Yes, I did. Those arguments, right? It is rare that one of you is lying, but one of your brains is confabulating. One of your brains has made you think that it's true.
It's always my husband's who does that, right? But to be honest, I know that mine actually does it more often than his because of my own fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and neurodivergence and neuro spiciness that I've got going on. So anyways, that's how healthier brains, somewhat healthier brains or whatever, neurotypical, what the heck is that? I don't even know. But anyways, that's how more typical brains confabulate is by thinking that you did something or said something that you actually didn't.
And for people that have neurospiciness, that have FASD, sometimes autism, other kind of neurodivergence, they will do those type of confabulations. But sometimes it's these big, wacky, goofy things. So like an example of one of my daughter's most famous confabulations. So I have a 27-year-old daughter who has a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which is an organic brain injury received in utero from exposure. One of the times when she was a kid and she had stolen, it was a cell phone. You'll hear me say this on many different lives that she's stolen a lot of cell phones in her life.
And this is back when we were still punitive, shame-based parents, right? Using logic, all those typical parenting strategies. And so we're like, I'm like, you know, trying to figure out, get to the bottom of whose phone she has stolen this time. And she tells me it's Justin Bieber's cell phone and that he gave it to her. Okay. And obviously that's not true. Even if she had seen Justin Bieber that day, which she had not, by the way, even if she had seen him, he's not going to give her his cell phone.
People, nobody gives their cell phones away and especially a celebrity, right? So she had made, she had this big, what I thought was a lie at the time. Then later on a bazillion years later I learned she was confabulating. She had stolen the cell phone from somebody, I don't even know if I remember who this one was from to be honest, but in her anxiety and stress over knowing that she did something wrong and that I was about to punish her, right? My husband and I were about to punish her for this.
Her brain really started filling in the gaps of her memory. And in that moment, she honestly probably did not remember who she took it from. So Justin Bieber, it's Justin Bieber's cell phone was her story. And so anyway, so this is the story. And I am doing typical parenting, right? I'm like, no kid's going to lie to me. I'm going to bust your butt. You cannot lie to me. So I'm hammering down and I'm trying to get her to, I'm trying to prove and get her to admit that she was lying. The more I did that, the bigger and wackier the story became.
She said that he was performing at their school that day, which he was not. She said that he sang over 40 songs, which is more than you sing in a regular concert even, changed his outfit four times. And Selena Gomez was there as well. This is before he was married years ago. So I'm like the mom, the hardcore mom. I'm like, I'm gonna prove she's lying. So I get on my laptop, I pull up his touring schedule and he was performing in Brazil, right? We lived in Minnesota at the time. And I think it's my mic drop.
I win this one. And I show this computer to her and she's like, well mom, it was first hour. He could have gotten to Brazil in time for a concert. And the little fart was correct, by the way. She cannot remember what two times two is, but she can break any firewall or figure out some of this stuff. Anyways, I could not get her to admit she was lying. And the reason is, is because she didn't honestly think in that moment that she was lying. Her brain was making her think it was true. You want to know another population that does this a lot?
People with dementia, Alzheimer's. Really common for people with Alzheimer's to confabulate and make up things that aren't true. Whether it's these big wacky stories like the Justin Bieber cell phone or whether it's like that they did take their medication It can be small things. It could be like when I remember arguing with her once, I had asked her to take the trash out and she's like, I did. And I was like, no, you didn't look, it's full. And she's like, but I did. And we got into this argument over that.
Well, she's remembering taking the trash out six weeks ago or six years ago or whatever it is. She honestly, even in that moment, it's not a straight up lie. She's confabulating because she's feeling anxious all that kind of stuff so boy I'm telling you this would have been a game changer had we understood confabulation when this child was tiny because okay I'm trying to think I think she was for sure in high school like maybe 17 or something like that when I started to learn about confabulation it wasn't until she was 20 that I figured out how to approach it differently though that still took me many more years and I'll try to talk about that in another call here or another live or whatever we call these things.
But we used to shame her, right? We'd be like, you're a liar. Nobody wants to be around a liar. I don't want to raise a liar. I don't like a kid that lies. I don't like it when you lie. We can't trust you. broke your promise. You're not trustworthy. We shamed her all the time for that. until we finally started to understand the brain-based reason of where that was coming from. And you wanna know what? As I just, you know, I was diagnosed a year and a half ago with FASD and I now can sit almost every month and think of stories and things from my own childhood or adolescence or even young adult years where I'm like, oh yeah, I did that.
I can remember confabulating. I remember doing it with the, I could, I mean, Tim Brunner, if you're out there, he's a kid I went to school with, super, super nice guy. Anyways, I can remember sitting in elementary school, it was probably fourth or fifth grade, and I was telling a group of kids on the playground that I saw somebody jump off of the IDS tower when my parents had been down there to Minneapolis. I grew up in Willimer, Minnesota, two hours away. Anyways, I made-up this whole confabulation.
Now, that is the age you would have grown out of confabulating by, by the way. That was not neurotypical for me to be saying this big goofy thing at that age. And Tim Brunner was like, no, he called, he sniffed out the BS. Like he knew this wasn't true because like there's not even an observation deck up there. There's no way to jump off of the top floor of the IDS building in Minneapolis. And so, you know, so, but I must have been sitting there. I'm assuming now as I look back, I was feeling anxious for some reason and that was the thing that came out.
The most common time for individuals with neurospiciness especially to confabulate is when their anxiety is high. So first and foremost, when they're in trouble or think they're in trouble. Secondly, when they're trying to socially fit in and are feeling awkward in a situation. A lot of times it's around new people or people that they're not around often. And then third and fourth, when they're trying to understand or comprehend or remember something that they should. That's when we go into our downstairs anxious brain and a lot of weird stuff can start coming out in those moments, especially for somebody with FASD or other brain differences.
And so, yeah, so that's confabulation. That's what confabulation is. I'll, you know, I'll try to add another maybe maybe the next time I do a live stream is when I'll kind of talk about how we actually did. Yeah, I will do it. I'm gonna write that in my notes if I should take some notes somewhere, shouldn't I? I'm gonna write that down and I'm gonna remember that next time I'm gonna talk about the strategies of how we started to approach the confabulation differently once we started to understand what it was.
So thanks for joining me, you guys. I hope you all are good. You can also always put in the comments if there's questions or topics or things like that that you'd like me to talk about, especially from a parenting perspective or things like that. I do a lot of coaching on for parents and caregivers in particular on how to move away from punitive logic based consequence based parenting, which is almost how all of us grew up to a different connected relational kind of parenting that works much better, especially if we've got any kind of brain based differences.
All right, y'all have a good rest of your night. Take care.
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