A few days/weeks/months/(who can keep track?) ago I read something and followed up with the smart people on my job about pre-school aged children making up imaginary friends or siblings as a way to fantasize about things they have sudden or natural urges to do, but know is wrong.
Not as a scapegoat for the wrong things they do based upon their natural urges- that's totally different.
But as a way to process the ideas, actions, and consequences of stuff that seems really fun, stuff that they see on television, watch other kids do, think about sometimes, or hear about prefaced with things like "so help me God" and "don't even think about it".
Man alive, do I wish I would have read that before Jake started talking about his twin brother who goes by various names such as but not limited to: Spitty Brother, Cutty Brother, Turn on the Stove Brother, Stabby Brother, Hitty Brother, Touch Poop Brother, Pee on the Wall Brother, Play with Matches Brother, Taste Pee Brother, Finger in the Butt Brother, Eat Snot Brother, Break Glass Brother, Pencil in the Nose Brother, Microwave Cat Brother, Clothes Dryer the Cat Brother, and Write on the Walls Brother.
It's perfectly normal and healthy and sane and doesn't mean your kid is seriously contemplating any of this or has a trio of sixes under that crazy mop of hair or that you are failing miserably as a parent/role model/television screener. It doesn't mean that the kids at school and the cousins and the neighbors are devilspawn influencing your child. It's just a part of normal, healthy early childhood development. Part of sorting out good from bad and right from wrong and left from right and up from down.
So you can breathe now.
Or panic.
Whichever you chose.
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Maybe panic. We've never had imaginary friends. That could be the autism too since everything is so literal all the time.
no!!!..don't panic..he has a great imagination!!!
Imaginary friends - Totally normal. More disturbing is when your son comes home and tells you stories about one of the boys in his preschool class that you know he's had some issues with but now you're not sure how much of what he tells you is true and how much is exaggerated, over-fabricated crap he is pulling from his imagination. His obsession with this one child is ridiculous. Do your books, classes, and experts have anything to say about that because I'm getting itchy thinking about how strange this all is.
Oh yes, and what do they say about obsessions regarding the Transformers? Sigh.
What an imagination! I never would have begun to think of some of those! My "I live my life out of the box all of the time" sweetie pie has an imaginary scientist friend. I think that "panic" in any situation will just scare a child, so I'll go with nice little chat.
Finger in the Butt Brother and Clothes Dryer Cat Brother cracked me up!
I always had an imaginary buddy but it wasn't really for the same reasons but I think this is perfectly normal, and creative honestly.
My imaginary buddy was a Unicorn. He met me at the bus stop every day and I got to gallop home on him to my house. He stayed under the steps in the basement and I never told my parents about him.
I was an only child who dearly wanted a horse, this was my replacement. As for blaming another thing for mistakes I made... I will never go back on the fact that my dad ate all the oreo cookies, not me!
Parenting. Is. Hard. My kids are only 18 months apart so they had each other instead of imaginary friends. When I was a kid, though, my best friend had an imaginary friend named Syrup Byrup. Did you ever watch the cartoon Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends? Best show EVER.
Don't panic. NO. I had enough imaginary friends to invade the multiverse (twice) when I was a kid. I grew up around less than psychologically healthy individuals, and as a child I, of course, wanted to fit in. I got lucky, and somehow my head dealt with the fact that I didn't want to hurt small animals (like a few of my um... relatively close neighbors) by making up (I couldn't write yet) little stories about terrible little imps that went around hurting anything they touched. I grew up to become a healthy individual--I think, right?
I'm no longer six, although I ate enough ice cream yesterday to have my doubts. Anyway, I'm 6 x 5 plus a few bits, but I still create my imaginary friends and fiends. I lived through horrors my mind had problems believing. I can make sense of them when I give them names and "life" in my stories. And life is WAY better when I kill them in fiction.
So don't panic, your kid is as healthy as his mama ;-)
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