To be concerned that my 10 year old is too childlike

[SamVussain]

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!!!!"

Leave her be and thank your lucky stars you have a lovely, innocent and uncorrupted little girl.

She’ll grow out of this stage soon enough, then you’ll miss it. Please don’t force a mobile phone etc on her to help her “grow up”. If our kids stayed like children for longer we’d all be better off.

She's 9. My dd group is 7/8 and she mixes with 8/9 too and this is their play. I'm sure it change around 11...but let your dd be a child for as long as she can

I hope mine is still like that in a few years. She’s only 8 but has recently started playing with younger children at school as lots of the girls in her class are over imaginary play which makes me quite sad. I can see why being out of step worries you though. Does she do anything like drama? Mine has been much happier since I enrolled her in a class as she has an outlet for her imagination even if her friends aren’t keen on that style of play.

Aww I would treasure this. I have two DDs. DD1 at 10 was full into makeup, socialising with friends, music etc and all hobbies went in the bin. Now at 15 it's all about the latest fashion, skincare, makeup. She hasn't "played" in years.
However, DD2 (now 12) was very much into her dolly's, cuddly toys, games etc at 10. Even now at high school I've noticed that her friendship circle seems quite child-like. None wear make up and they get excited when I pick them up for swimming or bowling. It's a car full of giggles rather than sullen looks and staring at phones like her sister did at that age.
So, enjoy it OP. I know I do. It doesn't last forever but I'm so grateful that my youngest has brought me extra time of playing, cuddles and her smelly soft toys.

This sounds wonderful. My children aren’t this old yet but I teach secondary and I love seeing y7 at the start of the year - they play games, hide and seek, tag, stuck in the mud and all that. They have amazing imaginations and are really fearless in their ability to play both at break and in their work (I’m an English teacher). It’s so sad that they often seem to lose this as they go through the year and ‘grow up’.
the most joyful - and well rounded adult - sixth formers are the ones I’ve sometimes ‘caught’ playing in the sixth form block.

I was like this as boy, but with "action figures" & toy soldiers. She'll be creating neural networks which will benefit her going forwards.

There's research which shows benefits ranging from increased language, cognitive & social skills to self-regulation, including things like empathy & reduced aggression.

"An important benefit of early pretend play may be its enhancement of the child’s capacity for cognitive flexibility and, ultimately, creativity (Russ, 2004; Singer & Singer, 2005). Russ, for example, in longitudinal studies, found that early imaginative play was associated with increased creative performance years later (Russ, 2004; Russ, & Fiorelli, 2010). Root-Bernstein’s research with clearly creative individuals such as Nobel Prize winners and MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant awardees, indicated that early childhood games about make-believe worlds were more frequent in such individuals than in control participants in their fields (Root-Bernstein, 2012)."

So no, I wouldn't worry.

Your child sounds wonderful and has age-appropriate interests and play.

There's growing pressure that means younger children feel they have to grow out of play at very young ages. Some parents encouraged it by thinking it proves their children are "mature". There's no reason for primary school aged children to be into TikTok, influencers and older interests.

I agree with @splashofcolour. Whilst this all sounds very sweet, she does sound very young for her age. I’d be worried that she’ll get eaten alive at high school! You’re clearly worried there’s something amiss or you wouldn’t be posting. How is she with other things? Does she still believe in Santa etc?

It doesn’t sound like it’s causing any issues socially so I wouldn’t be concerned. She sounds lovely! Also remember if she’s the oldest or an only child she may well seem more childlike than peers if they’ve got older siblings - I can already see that sometimes with my DD and her friends at 6, the ones with older siblings have much more awareness of older “stuff” than the others.

She sounds sweet. I think there is so much pressure on children to grow up, let her enjoy her childhood for as long as she wants

She sounds wonderful OP! Her imagination and creativity are such great qualities for her to keep developing.

It's her peers with phones that are being influenced to play/act age inappropriately. She sounds just like a healthy, happy 10 year old should be.

She sounds absolutely lovely. Don’t rush her, secondary school makes them grow ups.

I have a picture of my grandmother aged 12 surrounded by her dolls. She was allowed to be a child still but my own 12 year old, who was the most imaginative and playful child, stopped playing when she went into year 7 (and she was just 11)…

Enjoy her! Childhood like that is magical.

It's absolutely shocking that 9 year olds are being given phones. Wtaf. Let kids be kids.

My DS is a bit like this. In his case he is an only child and I do think this contributes...although he has plenty of friends and cousins and is very happy and not lonely. He also plays a lot of football so there are elements of him where he is a bit more grown up (attitude to pressure of competition etc). He loves his soft toys and treats them as if they're real though, although perhaps not quite to the extent your daughter does. Whilst I am writing this he's literally just come up to me and showed me a drawing his toy has apparently done!

I do worry a bit for him when I see other kids growing up so fast and what he'll be like at secondary school, but he's in year 5 like your DD. I'm going to set aside my worry for another year!

it's really striking how much we've simultaneously started expecting children to grow up really early and to not have any actual responsibility or independence.

This sentence from an earlier poster really made me stop and think. It hadn't really struck me how strange and potentially damaging this double whammy is. Children (especially girls) are pressured to leave 'childlike' behaviours too soon and begin to ape the intensely peer-pressured behaviours and attitudes of later adolescence. But it is also true that we deny children and adolescents their independence to a greater extent than at any time in recent history. And that they tend to lack the responsibilities they may have had in the past (taking over the care of younger siblings for a large part of each day, or even contributing to support family farming/income/whatever).
This goes on for quite a large chunk of time in their later childhood and adolescence. What does it do to people - to deny them the freedoms both of childish imagination and of more mature self-direction for such a chunk of time?

My 11 year old son has about 10 soft toys in his bed all lined up with special roles and personalities. He plays with them (though not to the extent OP's daughter does) and gets very cross if I accidentally "squash" one. Seems normal to me, but then I have my own soft toys in my bed! 😂

She sounds lovely. Imaginative play for a 9 year old is wonderful and appropriate.

I agree wrt responsibilities in the family. It would be very good for boys in particular to look after younger siblings a bit more. Perhaps girls too — as I was involved in bringing up a younger sibling, I was surprised at how unfamiliar friends found the responsibilities of motherhood. Also, the UK might be more child-friendly if more adults had experience with looking after children (although it could go quite the other way...!).

Children are often under a lot of pressure at school, though, so I don't think they're free of responsibility — just a different sort.

It's extremely bad for their mental health. One of the reasons why teen mental health is in crisis. You sum it up brilliantly.

And of course this kind of imaginative play is something that many of us keep as full-blown adults. I'm sure that my relationship with my houseplants has something of the same quality (I sometimes talk to them, or even apologise and explain if one is left out when its neighbours are watered). And of course every rime we read a novel etc we are investing intense emotions in beings that don't really exist.

Mine was like this at age 10. All pink dresses, teddies and imaginative games.

It's sweet and lovely, but it didn't make for a very happy Year 6 when the cachet in the playground became all about who had a phone and a boyfriend.

She had been popular before but suddenly the social circles were all redrawn and she struggled. She realised she had to grow up for secondary school and kind of reinvented herself for it.

I’d encourage her to write stories about them. Channel that imagination!

My 9 year old is exactly the same. Plays in the exact same way. Believes in the tooth fairy, Father Christmas etc.

It has crossed my mind that she's getting a bit old for this, but realistically, I know she's going to grow out of this soon. I'll miss it so for now, I'm just going to enjoy it as she's my last baby.

Don't worry, OP, just enjoy your lovely child.

I’d say revisit this in a year’s time. If the chasm between here and her friends’ interests has widened by then, you might want to consider possible reasons for it. At this age though, it’s hard to say, particularly as she’s generally social.