It's not easy, but children can gradually be taught to be little diplomats. She didn't want to hurt her mom or the nice neighbor, but she did. The little girl has to learn there are times when it's not necessary to tell the whole truth. Children don't understand. It's easy for them to get mixed up and say what we considered to be the wrong thing.
Children can get confused, as they try on and play with words like costumes.
As this exchange demonstrates, kids understand a lot more and a lot less than we might expect. We often assume our children understand more then they do, and then we're surprised when their innocence leaves us red-faced. The dog was in the backseat of the station wagon. But we hadn't asked for permission to bring along our cat, who was hidden in her carrier. We pulled up to our realtor's office and he came out to the car to hand over the keys.