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For a few years, my family had two extra members. Their names were Bob and
Don. They entered our lives when my youngest son, Liam, was about 3 years old:
He told us they were his cousins.
Their ages were a little hard to pin down; Liam didn’t really have a
good grasp of numbers or the concept of age. Sometimes they were older than
Liam, sometimes they were younger. We never got detailed descriptions of what
they looked like, but he told us that Bob was “good” and Don was “fresh,” meaning
he had a tendency to be naughty. They had lots of adventures—they traveled
the world and got into various scrapes—which, when they weren’t
due to natural disasters or encounters with dangerous wild animals, were usually
Don’s fault.
Liam loved to talk about Bob and Don. We were most likely to hear a Bob and
Don story when the attention had moved off Liam to one of his four older siblings—or
when there was a moment of silence.
We listened patiently (okay, not always so patiently), and asked questions
about the duo’s adventures, which didn’t always make sense, though
Liam was always happy to supply additional details. It never occurred to us
to point out to Liam that Bob and Don didn’t actually exist. We all played
along. It was fun.
Once somebody asked me if we worried about the Bob and Don phenomenon. Worrying
hadn’t occurred to me. But as a pediatrician, I know that many families
do worry when their child starts talking to an invisible person in the chair
next to him.
There isn’t reliable data on just how many children have imaginary friends,
but it’s likely many more than we realize. Marjorie Taylor, PhD, a psychologist
at the University of Oregon, has done extensive research on the subject. She
and some colleagues published a study in 2004 that estimated that nearly two-thirds
of children have an imaginary friend at some point in their lives. They had
a pretty generous definition of imaginary friends, which included talking to
a stuffed animal. But the overall point is that most kids do spend some time
playing with a friend who isn’t real.
It’s not just young kids who have imaginary friends, either. While most
children stop playing with them as they enter school and their lives fill with
other activities, the same study also found that there were plenty of children
who kept their imaginary friends through a few years of grade school.
Sometimes parents worry that kids have imaginary friends because they can’t
make real ones, but that’s not the case. There’s no correlation
between the number of imaginary friends and real friends a child has. In fact,
children with imaginary friends tend to be very sociable and have better “social
understanding,” or the ability to see the world through someone else’s
eyes.
Parents also worry that having an imaginary friend means that children are
confused about what is real and what is not. This isn’t true either.
Children know the difference between real and imaginary friends. In fact, children
in the study often stopped researchers in the midst of their questions to make
sure that the researchers understood that the friends weren’t real!
Most of the time, having an imaginary friend is harmless for a child, but there
are certainly exceptions. Sometimes, depressed and lonely children invent friends
to better cope with depression and loneliness. It’s also true that some
children with mental illness may believe that things and people exist when
they don’t. If parents feel that their child is acting depressed or in
a way that’s worrisome, they should call their doctor. They should also
call their doctor if their child seems genuinely confused about whether an
imaginary friend is real or not, or if the imaginary friend is telling them
to do things they don’t want to do. However, this is rare.
For the vast majority of children, an imaginary friend is not only normal,
but also beneficial. Having an imaginary friend gives a child a chance to use
his imagination, something that is not to be taken for granted in this TV generation.
Children with imaginary friends are more likely to have better verbal skills,
and to be more creative. These special friends can be a great source of companionship
and entertainment—and even offer a child the opportunity to practice
conflict resolution.
They also give children a chance to work through confusing issues in their
lives. We certainly saw this with Liam; very often Bob and Don’s adventures
mirrored something Liam was curious or worried about. As he told us the stories,
it gave us a chance to understand what he was thinking, answer his questions,
and reassure him.
Over time, we heard less about Bob and Don. Just before Liam’s 6th birthday,
I asked Liam about them. He hesitated and looked at me a little sheepishly. “They
died,” he said. “Really?” I said. “That’s terrible!” We
were distracted by a visitor and didn’t finish the conversation, so a
few days later I brought it up again. “What happened with Bob and Don?” I
asked.
“They weren’t real,” he told me, almost nervously. “I
made them up in my head.” It was all I could do not to laugh; it was
so utterly wonderful to me that he thought we’d all believed in Bob and
Don. At the same time, I was sad to see them go; it was yet another passage
in the life of my youngest baby.
“That’s okay,” I said. I took his hand and we went outside
to play. |
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