Did The Boy have a needier sibling, a sister or brother who took up so much of his mother’s attention that The Boy felt like he needed to do something to make her notice him? Cry, “Wolf!” for example. Maybe he had a sibling with extra medical needs, and he was trying to create some of his own drama so his parents would rush to rescue him, too. Or was he the medically challenged kid, for whom everything actually was a crisis, so he may have not realized that people take him a little too seriously?

Did he know that details matter, that seeing a wolf in a zoo is not the same as seeing one in your yard, and that seeing one from afar is not the same as seeing one up close? Maybe he was the type of child who would come home from school and say that the teacher yelled at him when it turned out that his rebbi was reenacting Antiochus in the Chanukah story and was just talking in a deep, loud voice.

Maybe The Boy was part of a big family, and most of the time, nobody was listening to anything he was saying anyway.

Did The Boy’s teachers or parents often brush him aside? Did they take anything he said seriously? Or maybe, once he lost his credibility, he lost it all for good.

I also wonder about his mother. Was she the anxious type who would go into crisis mode every time he fell when he was a toddler? I have heard that if you do that, you might make your kids more anxious.

Also, adults seem to tell the story with a kind of satisfaction. Don’t be like the boy who cried wolf because… you know what happened to him. But I’ve been wondering — his mother wasn’t happy when he finally learned his lesson the hard way, right? She must have been devastated. When adults tell the story, there’s no trace of devastation. It served him right.

Would the mother have done anything differently? Did she have a mentor who told her to ignore The Boy’s cries of “Wolf!” until something actually happened? Or did she come to that conclusion on her own? Was she happy when he finally learned his lesson? Or did she regret not addressing his anxiety or needs a little better? Did she struggle with guilt? Maybe she went to therapy or spoke with a parenting coach. Or maybe she was perfectly fine, just as the story makes it sound.

Am I missing part of the story? Or is it exactly as it is told, and The Boy was just lying because he felt like it, until he suffered the consequences.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 960)