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Original poster

Concerns about child's imagination

31 replies

mummytotwoxo · 01/01/2025 09:36

Is there ever a point a child's imagination becomes a concern. I don't know if I'm overreacting or not.. my son you could say is quite quirky he is 5 he has talked to himself for as long as I can remember. Often repeating anything said to him in a whisper. For around about a year he has had an imaginary friend (a 23 year old man) so he says. He's currently sat in the kitchen wrapping up "gifts" for his imaginary friends birthday he was also doing this yesterday. 2 nights ago he woke up in the middle of the night presumably hallucinating he got himself very upset and was saying things were there that was not for hours. I brought him downstairs at 4am to calm him down. I contacted the gp the morning after, we are waiting for an appointment. Last night he woke once freaking out and settled back down in minutes and then again a few hours later I caught him just sat up in bed in silence.

I'm really starting to be worried about him. Am I over reacting? He doesn't really watch tv/ screen time I don't let him in supervised on YouTube ect so I know it's not that.

OP posts:
Wallacewhite · 01/01/2025 09:42

The whispering thing is called echolalia, your son is a little old for it maybe, but it can be a perfectly normal part of language development.

ChristmasisinManchester · 01/01/2025 09:42

Sounds like he’s having night terrors, which I believe are a different issue than his daytime imagination. I’m sure GP will put you at rest.

BlueRidgeMountain · 01/01/2025 09:41

Could be night terrors - DS1 used to have them when he was age 2-4yo. He’d wake in the night and we’d find him on the landing often babbling nonsense or sometimes screaming the house down. He acted like we weren’t there and he couldn’t hear us, so we’d just gently steer him back to bed and cuddle him till he calmed down and went back off to sleep. Doesn’t have them now, and has no lasting memory of them either.

Frangelicoo · 01/01/2025 09:39

Oh, and my 12 year old had dozens of imaginary friends when he was younger, including a ghost version of himself called ‘Sir DSname’ who, according to him ‘was dead for YEARS’.

Frangelicoo · 01/01/2025 09:38

Sounds like me as a child. I grew up to be a novelist.

CaptainMyCaptain · 01/01/2025 09:38

Quite normal. A friend's son had an imaginary friend with a whole back story and a really quirky name. He's a police officer now.