Vocabulary fabricate

You might change that to read: ". . . when i was a kid . . . " --otherwise, it's fine.

I think the following would read better.

"My father always lied to me when I was a kid."

Always applies to a period of time... but he say he fabricated a lie. One lie? The same lie? Over and over again?

Hi contrex,
over and over.

a different lie.

Hi all,
why can't I say 'while I was a kid'?

You can say it, no one said you can't. "When i was a kid" is just more likely to be what a native speaker would say.

Hi contrex,
I am still a little girl.

I'd say that you "can't" say it, Jane, because it's not the natural choice for a native speaker, which I gather, is what you would like to be.

It's one of those odd choices that seems very natural for many situations but for some odd reason, in certain circumstances, it's just not used.

Michael Swan in Practical English Usage, page 74, explains it this way;



[Do you have access to this book? It's excellent for sorting out these small nuances.]