To ask you at what age I should disabuse DD of the notion she is a real princess...

[Tallaween]

She will be 6 in the New Year.

It is a fairly elaborate fantasy, which involves a letter from the Queen and a flying horse when she is a 'grown up'.

The letter will invite her to come and live in the castle ("I'll miss you mummy when I live in the castle") - Warwick Castle if you're interested, a green flying horse because her fave colour is green.

She tells she is a real princess, relatives, postman, nice lady in Tesco etc etc

She really believes it, at what point to I gently tell her she's not a princess, she's just bog standard like her mother I kind of think I should do it before some other bugger does, but it's kind of sweet

Tell her the story of the Princess and the Pea (but not as a bedtime story).

A real princess can never go to sleep on a pea!

I think she's still the age where this sort of thing is fine, but I understand your worry someone will disillusion her quite cruelly. I'd think the biggest thing to worry about is making sure she knows that she is only as special as everyone else is, as it were.

WRT the Behaving At School thing, perhaps you could try telling her when the Queen was her age she had to listen to HER teachers. If she's a Rainbow you could add on how she & her younger sister listened to their Leader as Brownies/Guides, too. (Not that The Queen was a Brownie, but Princess Margaret was.) The Queen things nice manners are very important full stop, in fact & is polite to EVERYONE even though she is Queen.

Ah, small children & their Imaginations. I was once in the ticket office at my local station when a small boy in a buggy flung an accusing finger at me & VERY crossly-indignantly said "you're not a dragon, you're a Princess AND THAT'S RUBBISH" - the lady with him looked very relieved I took that one in my stride...

Ooops, sorry, mixed up the OP & another poster's Princesses, sorry!

She's 6 leave her be. I always think it's a shame that the "real world" disabuses us all of our childhood dreams and games and imaginative stories, and we all eventually know that there are no "fairies at the bottom of the garden" and Santa is our Mam and so on - long may your little princess reign - even if all you do is nod and smile, she will grow out of it, there is no rush to make her do it - she is 6
(When I was 6, I convinced just about every child in my year at school that I could teach them to fly. I made my mam cut out paper wings and tie them to my shoes, then I climbed up on a tree stump, flapped my arms, and jumped, and when everyone laughed at me, I told them that the reason they couldn't fly, and they had "killed my fly" was that they didn't believe and now I am a perfectly weird normal middle aged mother of five...

Leave her be.

I'm 23 and pretend I'm a fantastic singer and no one will tell me otherwise!

I am CRYING over your DD finding 'the love of God' in the toilets OP - fantastic! Makes perfect sense that it must be an actual thing, or why would grownups say "Oh for the love of god"? I bet she thought you'd be dead jealous

Oh the love of God thing amused me no end, I've still no idea what it was she actually saw/found though

She is brilliantly inadvertantly funny (as most small children are). I still snigger over the time I told her she's European and she gave me the stare of doom and said "I'm a peon, YOU are"

I shall refrain from informing her of her lack of princess status for now then. As long as she is happy, who cares, right?

Aaww, this is so sweet. I am an adult and my Mum still tells me I am one!. She unofficially adopted a young man as her Son earlier this year and he is the Prince and I am the Princess and that is how it is!!. Liek another poster said she may grow out of it and then it was only leave a happy childhood memory behind her. Similar to another poster too, I went through a stage where I imagined I owned a horse (my Mum's best friend's Daughter Julie had really got one for her 18th Birthday) and I think I was just copying after that. But I really did believe it. Sometimes even as an adult it's nice to have some magic and, as Justin Bieber says, #BELIEVE

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I got bitten on the bum by this.I wove a massive web of fantasy for my children.Therewere fairys pixies princesses the whole nine yards.Unfortunatly I was a bit to believable when I was caught dressed up as the Easter bunny at pre school.I convinced all the little ones I was the Easter bunny this went on for years.Last year my eight and a half year old had to be sat down and I had to come clean because she was getting into screaming fights in school about all the magical things I told them.I don t know who was more devastated them or me.We still believe in the jolly red man though,and the tooth fairy.at nearly ten! I think children should be encouraged to continue to have fantasy lives for as long as possible.I'm a completely normal responsible adult in case anyone is wondering.

My DD is also going to be a princess, apparently when she is 10 (she is now 5).
My DS (3) was going to be a dinosaur but is now going to be thunder and stamp really loud.

Not sure if this is what you're looking for but there's a great Sesame Street thing with US Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomeyer. She's explaining the word 'career'. The muppet says she wants to be a princess when she grows up but Justice Sotomeyer refers back to the definition for why princess is not a career. YouTube it - it's lovely

At least it is not an embarrassing fantasy! At 5 I was definitely replacing Jay as the fourth member of Bucks Fizz! Oh the shame...

Is she old enough to read 'A Little Princess' with her?

I always liked the idea behind that, that you could be a "princess" even when you were a beggar by being kind, good and conducting yourself well