HELP. DD 3.11 thinks she is a chicken. WWYD?

[ConstantCraving]

My DD is 3.11 and loves chickens - to the extent that she wants to believe she is a chicken. She has various chicken names she goes by: 'Happy Mrs Chicken', Henny Penny' etc and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of all things chicken (including chicken coops - you wouldn't believe how many there are!) DH and I have not really seen this as an issue, we like the fact she has a good imagination ,and her ability to remember information - and she's only 3, if you can't be a chicken at 3 when can you ?
Anyway, she has recently started nursery for the first time and its causing some issues -she has been calling the other children chickens, which has upset some of them, and she gets upset if the staff call her a little girl. I have sat her down and explained that other children don't want to be chickens and that she is a girl who loves chickens and loves playing being a chicken but she got really upset and stood in front of the mirror saying 'I think you are a chicken, your hair could be feathers .. you have got a beak' (she still talks in the 3rd person) trying to convince herself! Nursery seem worried by her obsession - and now I'm getting worried. My much older DS never did anything like this. I just thought she'd grow out if it - anyone else experienced anything like this?

BlueSprite - that is very sweet! I imagine him as a little train starting up in the morning.

GroupieGirl - how does your DD know Spanish and German?

I LOVE all these crazy children. This is what childhood is all about. How lovely to read about it and experience it again vicariously.

To the carrot-lover's mum, DD had a similar thing with a small pumpkin at about two. In the end, I got so sick of replacing it that we let it go a bit mouldy and gave it a decent burial in the garden. No trauma so far.

We also have a plethora of imaginary friends. They multiply by the day. I particularly like the tiny rat superhero who helps me find my hairbrush every morning (at least he is useful).

My 9 year old has been a cat quite a lot. I can still find her sitting quietly washing her paws with her tongue from time to time.

She once bought a donkey outfit with her Christmas money and wore it for three solid days. She smelt like a donkey by the end and we had to physically take her out of it so we could wash it and her. She cried. This was in Thr last few years. She would randomly decide to wear it when we went shopping ("I think I will be the donkey today mum"). MN said it was fine and not to worry.

Dd1, and I only remembered this recently, had a horse. Well it was really a stick but she walked everywhere with the stick held aloft and the horse was on the other end of it. It walked from our house to the childminders and back every day. The stick had to be sat carefully at the front door because of course you couldn't let a horse in the house.

Yes, our carrots all eventually went mouldy too Herisson. Although we buried them all in the kitchen bin (bad parents).

But that was okay, because DS by that time was taking to bed his new comfort object: a massive hard and anatomically correct plastic dinosaur from the Natural History Museum.

The dinosaur had so many spiky sections that he would puncture a lung if you rolled onto him. He was often accompanied by a further tub of 40 small spiky dinosaurs, so that anyone trying to read DS a story in bed would emerge with difficult-to-explain puncture wounds.

The dinosaur was soon jettisoned for another comfort object/pet with less potential for injury: a post-it note on which DS had stuck hundreds of labels from apples.

We told DS that "Appley" had to live in his bag during nursery because other children would want to steal him, although it was really to avoid more looks of pity from the staff.

My dd had a pet cabbage. She sobbed when her daddy wouldn't let her sleep with it. It was still in the plastic. She loved that cabbage.

She also has been a chicken. She sat on (wooden) eggs on a pillow.

She spent the whole of her 4th year as a dog. A different dog every day which I had to name and then fully describe both in looks and character.

Until Yr1 my DD pretended to be a dog. At parents evening her teacher said they didn't see it as too much of a problem until she got the whole class barking at them! We went through 4 pairs of school shoes a year due to constant crawling. Pleased to say that DD who is almost 8 and in Yr3 is a "normal" child, but will always have space in her huge heart for all things woofing!

When I was 3 and my sister was 1, my mum took us into work with her. When her colleague said to me "is your name Dale? :)" I looked at her with pure indignation and said "no! I'm fireman Sam and that's Station Officer Steel."

It's still talked about

'She does a kind of running commentary through the day on what 'Happy Mrs Chicken' is up to...'

Is anyone else imagining a Big Brother stylee 'Daaaay 3, at nursery, and Mrs Chicken is in the painting area...'

Please tell me you're a Geordie OP?

Oh I'm crying with augured at this thread.

My just turned three year old spends much of his time as a train, and has memorised quite lengthy announcements, which he intersperses with quite realistic hissing/whirring/moving noises. He has to stop at every station - they can sometimes be infuriatingly closely spaced, which can be problematic if we're actually trying to go somewhere. We often get stuck in a loop visiting Clapham Junction over and over.

Other times he's a lift

Augured??

Laughter.

A little boy who was probably about 4 came into work recently with his mum and his grandma.
The mum asked me for admission for one spectator, one adult and one child, only for her DS to pipe up from behind the counter:

'But, I'm not a child! I'm a penguin!' in the most serious little voice.

I've got to admit, the mum looked pretty exasperated; she'd clearly got a bit tired of having a penguin for a son.

I humoured him though, and printed off tickets saying 'one spectator, one adult.......and one penguin!'

I can imagine it might get quite annoying after a while, but I don't imagine it's anything to really worry about yet. She's still quite little.

Ah, this thread is lovely! I have a 5yo and a 2yo and neither has ever pretended to be an animal or used a vegetable as a comforter. They spend a lot of time playing Star Wars and Ben 10 which is much less cute. I shall trade them in...

My dd was quite obsessed with one particular animal at around this age. It went on for a good few years. We didn't mind. But we found nursery and school staff were completely alarmed by it - one supply teacher accused us of treating her like an animal at home.

She's just an imaginative type really. We no longer have to call her by her animal name these days. But it was her passion at the time and I don't think it did her any harm.

Sorry Outraged not a Geordie ... but yes that's exactly what she does!
Ruby your DS wins the prize for most unlikely comfort objects, I didn't think the carrot could be topped, but 'Appley' the post-it does it . I think he and DD would get on very well. DD had a plug on a chain that she used to take for walks. People looked at her pityingly, I had to explain that she did have toys, she just loved her plug..

My brother thought he was a guinea pig until he was about 11. He turned out pretty much normal.

what a lovely thread. My DD was a dog quite a lot, but an odder habit was identifying with elderly men in stories. So for instance playing out various Beatrix Potter stories she'd be Mr McGregor or the Tailor of Gloucester.

A bit older and DH was foolish enough to get the 'Muzzy' French thing. I don't think she learned any French except how to pronounce the soft J in Jean...but she developed a complicated game based on it in which she was Jean the gardener, I (for my sins) was the princess whatever-her-name was and then there were a whole lot of other princes and princesess enacted by some of her favourite toy dogs... who all had real names but also their 'pretend' names.

My DD is 3. Tonight she was a gruffalo duck.
She is often a little pink pony.
Very frequently a cat.
Sometimes a superhero.
At times she is a princess.

I love her in all her incarnations!

Oh, and to answer the OPs question, WWYD? Build her a nice little nest. Or a henhouse out of a huge cardboard box.

GroupieGirl - my DS (3) thinks he speaks Korean and often greets people with some sounds he insists are Korean words.

I love some of the characters on this thread. However, for my personal mental safety, I will be avoiding allowing DS1 to see: cabbages, bath plugs and Korean people from now on. There is so much more out there for him to obsess about.

Is anyone else reminded of father jack and his "brick"?

LOL at some of your dc's personalities

My older daughter had an imaginary friend called Pip when she was 3-4, he lived with us, we had to put a plate for him on the table at mealtimes, we got a running commentary on what he was doing during the day - for almost a whole year.

My younger daughter has had many personalities, most memorable the dinosaur phase. She was a T-Rex, roared at her friends, ate raw meat (I called the GP), pretended to bite a playgroup helper (and got into trouble for it), was only able to sleep with her 3 dinosaurs arranged around her (soft toys - Natural History Museum) in her dino bedcover and cushion.

She's been a dog for most of the last 3 weeks, and the focus is now on dragons. She wants a dragon costume for her birthday and a castle cake with a dragon on top.
She has already told me that her teacher has told her and her friends that dragon play fighting is too dangerous for play time. God knows what they were up to. Probably pretend biting and fire spitting.

Dd was a cat for a good year. Even took to rubbing her head against strangers . She was also a racing car for a while and needed frequent pitstops to change her tyres.