Did you have an imaginary friend as a child?

[ofwarren]

I did.
Mine was called Baby and was the size of my hand. My favourite book for a while was Thumbelina so I probably got the idea from there.

I used to take her out in my dolls pram and play with her all day long.

I have no recollection of when I stopped thinking about her.

I've read imaginary friends are really common in autistic children and some keep them into adulthood.

No but I was quite envious of those that did. I went to uni with someone who had an imaginary friend who was a baby dragon made of vanilla ice cream.

I love it!

I still have several and I'm nearly 50 😄

Do you? I wish I still did. Do you just talk to them?

I had several when I was about 10. One of them gifted me an imaginary horse too. 😂

Oh my god! I'm so jealous!
Mine never gave me anything, never mind something as epic as a horse!

I had an imaginary friend in my early teens. I was just so desperate to have a friend who cared about me and wanted to spend time with me, so I made one up. I knew it was made up but I found it comforting and it eased my loneliness to imagine that I had a friend. Sometimes when I feel very lonely I still talk to my imaginary friend, because I still find it comforting to imagine that someone wants to be my friend.

I'm glad you still get some comfort from her.

Not exactly an imaginary friend but imaginary situations. I'd daydream (and still do) whole backstories and storylines of characters in my head. Bu
Bit its like an audiobook lucid dream rather than me interacting with them if thay makes sense.

I like the sound of that!

No, but I had seventeen invisible children! There was Hannah; John, Zac, Liam and Jamie (quads); Jim; Timmy; quintuplets where one of them was called Zack (it's a long story); Lucy; Benji; and some more I've forgotten. At one point I decided they were again too fast and made them all two years younger. I still remember giving birth to Lucy on the landing outside my brothers' room!

I still have plenty of story people. Some of them belong to stories I've written down (I have a whole shelf of notebooks stretching back to my early teens), and others of them I've written snippets but still know their whole life stories. I made a list once (when I was bored) and named over six hundred of them. That was ages ago, though - there must be many more now.

Plus I play the Sims (2 - the others are rubbish!) and rehearse/write stories for them.

I love this!
It's really fascinating

@TirednExhausted that sounds so similar to me!

I did, a firefigher called Elvis! From the TV show, not the singer!

No, never — when I read in kids' books about characters who had imaginary friends, I couldn't make the concept make sense for me.

From what I'm reading based on a cursory Google, imaginary friends are significantly less common in autistic children…? It would make sense if they manifested a little differently, though, including maybe lasting longer, in those who do have them.

I think it happens because of loneliness and also because you can totally control what they do when 'playing' with them.
My elder brother who has classic autism still has his imaginary friend and he's in his 40s. His is manifested in a different way though I think. He doesn't imaginary play with her as such don't think, but he talks about her and says what she has done.
It's really interesting.

I wonder if part of the reason I didn't have an imaginary friend was my hyperlexia — by the time I turned three I was (apparently) spending a lot of my time reading books, which are already full of as many made-up people and scenarios as a kid could want, instantly accessible on demand.

I was hyperlexic too though. Taught myself to read at 2 and was reading full books like you at 3.
Can you see images in your minds eye?

Yes, I can see images in my mind's eye if I want to. I don't tend to do it spontaneously when reading, though.

My parents thought my hyperlexia was cute/normal — it started with things like recognising brand logos at around 18m, when I was two I would sit in the trolley seat and read the packaging on food as my mum took it from the shelves, and by the time I turned three I could read books. It seems like I must have picked up how it worked from looking at the pages of storybooks while my parents read the words? They didn't actively teach me or anything, it just happened. My older brother happily waited until he went to school, so it's not like my parents were pushing reading (supposedly, he came out of reception class one day having had reading explained to him, said, "I can read now, mummy" and then fairly competently demonstrated his new skill — my family is a bit weird when it comes to reading). But my mum was apparently exactly the same as me as a child, so it wasn't particularly notable for them that their 3yo had their nose in a book half the time. Only seemed unusual when I went to nursery, and apparently it wasn't normal for a 3 year old to sit in the storytelling chair in the corner and read out a story to the others when we were impatient for storytime and the teachers were otherwise occupied.

I don't think there's any reason being hyperlexic would mean you couldn't have an imaginary friend, just that reading can fulfill some of the needs that an imaginary friend might be created to fulfill.

Quite possibly

Sort of. I created an imaginary ‘family’ when I was younger. Being an only one I always felt very alone so created 2 brothers and a sister…It even built further with aunties and uncles and cousins! I do have extended family but we always had to travel to see them as they lived 4 hours away.

Please tell me I’m not the only one who has done this as I’m feeling a right weirdo!

I do and I did. I also have a composite of all the friends I've had, who exist in a sort of 'what would composite friend do in xyz situation' which helps me to navigate social events or real life challenges. I am still not great at thinking on my feet, unless it's a very obvious problem to solve, so these friends are really useful to me.

I also have the @TirednExhausted audiobook thing going. So I've actually started writing which has been fabulously satisfying and enriching. Of course writing has now become a specialist subject and I've done a lot of courses and reading, but it's great to have a new thing to talk about to people.

My imaginary friend from childhood disappeared when I went to school. I was very lucky in that I made friends quite easily. Because I enjoyed very complex imaginative play I needed a lot of real life people to join in, so I pretty much facilitated break time in the playground for half of the class. Although I really struggled with anger if anyone left the group, I learnt to control that as I knew it wasn't kind, and I was desperate to be kind.

I heard about the concept of imaginary friends and tried to invent one. Probably when aged around 9 or 10. She was called Emmeline. I was never able to imagine her well enough to talk to her though, or to think what she might say or do. Or interact with her at all. I don't think the attempt lasted very long.

Later I had imaginary friends / pets who were animals. They were very intelligent and possibly magical and they chose to follow me around and come on walks etc. There was an otter, a squirrel, a magpie, a fox and sometimes a deer or horse or osprey. Again I didn't take to them, just imagined them running along beside me etc.

I also used to lie in bed and tell myself stories while waiting to fall asleep. For years there was some variation of me being transported into Narnia. I actually forced myself to learn to like eating mushrooms (in real life) so that I would have something to eat other than apples or wood sorrel if I ever suddenly found myself deep in a Narnian forest! (I didn't study fungi identification though. Maybe decided that all mushrooms in Narnia were edible unless found in magical caves or something.)