My daughter has probably easily a hundred different imaginary friends. Most of them are animals (zebras, cats, dogs, beavers, quattis, you name it), some are people she’s seen on TV (like Blue and Magenta from Blues Clues, or the Kratt brothers from Zoboomafoo), or characters from books we’ve been reading, (like Ozma and Dorothy).
They usually just stop by for the afternoon. Rainbow calls out to me something along the lines of:
“I have something exciting to tell you! ‘tend beavers are coming over today. They called on the ‘tend phone and said they’d be here at 4 o’clock. Can you open the side door so they can get in when they get here? It’s going to take them while to drive here in their ‘tend car.”
Followed by her telling me that she can’t come have lunch just yet, “I have to hurry up and finish this dam before the beavers get here. I want them to have some place to sit.”
As nap time rolls around I try and convince her to help me clear the four foot pile of toys and blankets blocking my hallway. Can we clean this dam up now? “No! The beavers aren’t leaving until they run out of food!”
Where it says beavers insert zebras, dogs, cats, mousies, quattis, Kratt brothers, Zoboomafoo, Blue, Magenta, etc, etc, and you get the picture.
Now in the past few weeks Rocket has started to join in with her own brand of imaginary friend, the “tiny guys” and the monsters. Can’t find the sippy cup? That’s because one of the monsters took it. Crayon scribbled all over a toy, one of the monsters did it. She asks me to carry them on the stairs for her. She babbles about friendly monsters, grumpy monsters, and little tiny guys who are sooooo cute!
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| Image from Vanessa Monfreda |
I have trouble with this whole imaginary friend thing. I always feel sort of guilty when I’m humouring my girls. Like they know I’m just playing along and are a little disappointed in me. It’s very odd to me because I have many clear childhood memories of my own imaginary friends and of how real they were to me. It makes me feel very awkward. How do you other parents handle the whole imaginary friend thing?
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