DD is 10 this month.
She's always had a vivid imagination but just recently I've started to develop little concerns about how childlike she is in her imagination.
She plays with her huge collection of soft cuddly toys, and dolls that look like little girls, like 12 inch dolls.
Every cuddly toy has a name and every doll has a name which she puts great effortin to choosing.
They are all looked after by her every day - woken up in the morning, dolls hair brushed and styled, dressed up in dolls clothes, all placed in to positions in the lounge - she'll sit them all in a line and then teach them or read to them, or she positions them in her bedroom. She tells me all about what kind of a day they're having, about what they're going to be doing. Then she gets on with her own day and in the evening she puts them all very carefully to bed and then tells me all about their day.
She talks about all her dolls and all her cuddly soft toys as though they are real.
She's 10 later this month and her entire birthday present wish list is cuddly toys in various different characters.
She has a good amount of friends, is popular at school and I arrange lots of playdates for her friends to come to ours, and she gets lots of invites back.
Her main play when friends come over is imaginative role play, where they invent scripts and play make believe characters. DD loves to play like this.
She's a lovely girl, a lovely personality.
Gentle, imaginative, cheerful, characterful.
But I've noticed her peers are starting to get much more grown up, they have mobile phones and most definitely aren't playing with dolls and cuddly toys anymore!
Is my DD unusual to be so in to dolls and soft toys at 10, and to treat them and talk about them as though they are real, with real feelings?
I said something the other day about a soft toy looking dirty and needing a wash, and she said "Ssshhh! Mummy! Shush! He will hear you! Don't hurt his feelings!!!!"