Imaginery sister

[MissiHoolie]

Ive namechanged for this.
This is really upsetting to write about...
We have 2 girls. The eldest 8 and youngest 3. I am a stepmum to the eldest and youngest is my biological DD. The girls are half-sisters, they are/were very close.
It is now nearly 3 months since the eldest was separated from us. We have had no contact at all since then, not even a phone call. The girls used spend lots of time together and when the eldest was not here, the sisters would have a chat each night on the phone.

DD at first used to talk about what she would do with her sister when she came back. She constantly talked about her, opened photo albums to look at pictures of sister, pointed to the pics and talked about what her sister was doing.
That went on 2+ months.
Recently that's changed and DD now talks about her sister like she is here, things like "Me and sister are going eat that chocolate later." "that's for me and that's for sister" etc
Although this behaviour is quite upsetting to watch it, is my instinct that DD is imagining her sister is here to help her cope with the situation. She chats quite happily about what she and her sister are doing or are going to do.
Anyone have experience or thoughts about this
TIA

I don't have any experience but wanted to sympathise - that must be very tough

Could I ask, what happened to your older DD? Is she with her biological mother?

My stepdaughters mother stopped contact. I don't want to go into the details on this part of the forum, apart from to say it's all now going through the family courts.

I have no experience of this sort of thing at all but just wanted to say that it sounds perfectly acceptable to me that your DD is "imagining" her big sister. She obviously misses her very much and is just coping as best she can.

Sounds like an awfully difficult situation for you all.

Found a sad passage from a book called Burying the Bones by Hilary Spurling, a biography of Nobel prize winner Pearl S Buck...

"The siblings who surrounded Pearl in those early days were dreamlike too. Her older sisters, Maude and Edith and her brother Arthur all died young in the course of six years from dysentery, cholera and malaria, respectively.
.........
when she needed company of her own age, Pearl peopled the house with her dead siblings."These three who came before I was born, and went away too soon, somehow seemed alive to me," "

sorry I'm finding this very upsetting.
Of course I am very worried about my stepdaughter too. I have known since her she was 3, she is very close to her father, my DP (she's a real daddy's girl) and very close to her sister. In all that time she has never been away from us for more that few days.

MissiHoolie, to get things into perspective, in all fairness, no one has died.

My dd does this with her older stepsister, we see her fairly regularly, but sometimes her mother will 'disappear' off with her on holiday for several weeks without letting us know and obviously that impacts on my dd.

The nursery have brought it to my attention before now as they were concerned, but dd seems fine in herself - she is just showing that she misses her stepsister.

What have you told your dd? I do hope it is all resolved quickly for you.