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Behaviour/development

Talk to others about child development and behaviour stages here. You can find more information on our development calendar.

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Original poster

Imaginary freinds!!!

23 replies

Angeliz · 22/04/2004 13:33

Hi everyone

I was just wondering if anyone's child has an imaginary feind!
My dd aged 3 has had one for about a year. Whenever we talk about her freinds, she always adds,"David who lives in the dark, dark, woods".
She has a good social life, cousins she sees all the time and lots of groups and things!

I do wonder if it's cause she's a little lonely at home, but i'm not really worried as it doesn't affect her life, he just crops up nearly every day!

Does anyone else have one????

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Evita · 22/04/2004 13:42

My dd's too young yet, 18 months. But I had one as a child from about 2 - 5 when I started school. I don't think it did me any harm. Have you tried asking her questions about him?

Kayleigh · 22/04/2004 13:44

Mine don't but apparently I did. Her name was Pauline. And my mum still likes to bring it up, especially when she meets new friends of mine !

kiwisbird · 22/04/2004 13:47

my ds had two called Humm and Romm, one incident springs to mind, when Humm got left on the bus, one hysterical 2 yr old... ds spent ages talking to the corner of the room looking up high, he always said he was talking to humm...
we know all about humm, we think he is a twin as humms family circumstances mirror ours as and when ds changes...
ds is now 10 and still mentions them but rarely so now.
he did use them to blame things on though!

scoobysnax · 22/04/2004 13:56

My dd has one too. She is 4.5 and has had hers for a long time although we have been hearing less of him recently. If dd is upset, she claims that this friend has been killed and cries her eyes out!

Original poster

Angeliz · 22/04/2004 13:59

This is so interesting!

Evita, yes i've asked her lots!
She has a whole life created for him. He has a mammy by the same name as me, but not me. He has nowhere to live and lives in the dark ,dark woods and dd thinks he should come and live with us. He is a big boy but looks like a little boy!

It's fascinating isn't it how their minds work!!

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Original poster

Angeliz · 22/04/2004 14:00

AAH, Scoobysnax, posts crossed! That's sad!

DD was a bit worried about him the other day as she said the lion had got his foot in the woods!!

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suedonim · 22/04/2004 14:12

Dd1 had a whole tribe of imaginary friends, although the main ones were Sophie and Gavin. We used to have to do things like let them all go through doors, which got a tad embarrassing when you're in Woolies, holding the door open for no apparent reason. Ds1 (12 yrs older than dd1) got fed up of Gavin accompanying us everywhere so he threw him off Hadrian's Wall when we were on a holiday!! I don't think dd, now 16, has recovered from the shock yet.

bundle · 22/04/2004 14:13

darling. and sophie.

Original poster

Angeliz · 22/04/2004 14:16

ROFL suedonim, i'm not far from Hadrians wall so if David starts being naughty we may have to have a family day out

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roisin · 22/04/2004 14:20

Hi all! This brings back some memories. Ds1 (nearly 7) had an imaginary friend called Sophie for about 18 months ... at the time he had speech (articulation) problems, and his peers and most adults couldn't understand him, so he used to talk to and about Sophie a LOT. We also used to get stories about Sophie's extended family ... had to use access ramps to accommodate Sophie's Grandma who was in a wheelchair ...?!

Anyway, she disappeared fairly abruptly when he was 4 during his first term at nursery I don't know what happened to her ... Maybe I should have worried whether she came to a grisly end like your Sophie Suedonim?

roisin · 22/04/2004 14:21

Whoops - sorry it was Gavin not Sophie wasn't it?

bottersnike · 22/04/2004 14:25

I had 2 imaginary friends when I was about 5. We played games and they always lost.

bundle · 22/04/2004 14:28

sophie is obviously a v common imaginary friend name. mine when i was little were Ely (pron. Ee-lee) and Jevvy.

hana · 22/04/2004 14:32

our dd has them too - one called kezzie who lives in her pocket and 'looks just like me mummy!' Kezzie goes everywhere with us - when she is chattering away I ask - who are you talking to? it's always Kezzie so I don't ask anymore
I think it is normal (although I joke and say it's high time for a brother or sister...) and that they eventually grow out of it

Rhubarb · 22/04/2004 14:32

Dd has numerous imaginary friends, Pinky (her favourite), Perky, Polar Bear, Maisie, Sian and some others I can't remember. She often walks with her hand out, holding one of her 'friends' hands. If she's done something wrong, then Pinky gets the blame. They're always going on their holidays to Portugal, France and Brighton ('cause we've just been) and they're always having horrible accidents!
The funny thing is that if we try to enter her little world, for instance if I say "Pinky wants you to play the jigsaw with her", she goes nuts! "NOOOOOOOO, Pinky's on HOLIDAYS!!" and she gets very wound up about it!

bundle · 22/04/2004 14:34

oh - forgot grandma (not her actual grannies, they are called granny and nanny). she lives in a pink house. and has pink hair. and drives a pink car. of course.

binkie · 22/04/2004 14:35

Ds had a Macca when he was 2 or 3 ish - who was 5 "and a big boy".

Now he has Pew, who is a whale, and dd (never to be outdone) has Bella, who is a girl whale AND A TEENAGER.

They also have some spiders, a blue one called Planton and a green one called Scree (named by ds, I may have got the colours the wrong way round); and a pink one (Pinkies) and a yellow one (Yellowies) named by dd. Guess who I think is more imaginative.

suedonim · 22/04/2004 15:05

Angeliz, you might see Gavin. Apparently he's still running up and down by Hadrian's Wall, near Housesteads, on the Scottish side, trying to climb over into England!

Roisin, I don't know what happened to our Sophie, either. Will ask dd when she gets home!!

Original poster

Angeliz · 22/04/2004 15:16

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Marina · 22/04/2004 17:28

ds has had an imaginary friend Randall for the past eighteen months (named after the villain in Monsters Inc). He eggs ds on to do naughty things, always has better ideas/bigger cakes/more interesting things to say than mummy and daddy, and even attends school with him. Various relatives of Randall's come and go (we've not heard much from his sister Shirley Hughes lately) but Randall is constant.
He's special to us too because without sounding maudlin about it Monsters Inc was bought as a present for ds just after his baby brother Tom was stillborn and we were all still in shock. Even though we have never broached this with ds I sometimes wonder whether Randall is on some deep level the little companion ds hoped for in Tom. Be interesting to see if dd will have an imaginary friend, according to ds she already has an invisible army of baby girls filling up the house with Barbie accessories and trying to prettify his Action Men...not bad going for 8 months.

Chandra · 22/04/2004 18:30

I had a cousin who owned an imaginary cat, she will play with it but in certain occasions she will cry if you leave him out while entering into the house!!! which brings me to another experience that made me wonder how imaginary are imaginary friends, i have posted it in another thread but here there is:

my sister's daughter had an imaginary "friend" when she was 3 but the weird thing about it was that you could see her fighting with him to take his hands off the toys or screaming because "Chipo" had pulled her hair or had scared her. My sister was a bit worried as she couldn't understand how an imaginary friend could be so violent so the day that her dd stop mentioning him she decided not to ask her to avoid reminding her about it.
About a year later one of her DH's co worker's son went through exactly the same "violent friendship" and eventhough the children had no contact at all, and he had never mentioned the details of the imaginary friend at work, the other child's imaginary friend had exactly the same violent behaviour and name which, curiously, is not used at all in our country...

nightowl · 22/04/2004 23:50

Thats just made my blood run cold chandra! im not going to put my story on this late as it still scares me now and ive got to go to bed alone!
ds had an imaginary friend called Daniel pretty much as soon as he could talk and until he stared school. sometmes he would come out with very strange things that he he couldnt possibly have known...eewww. not going to say any more.

nightowl · 22/04/2004 23:51

started school that is!

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