imaginary friends

[sarahjane]

I have a 3 year old who all of a sudden has aquired an invisible horse called Sophie. Spohie comes and goes through the day but she talks to her and asks me to hold her while she puts on coats etc? i have talked to her about it asked questions about colour, size, what she eats etc - am I doing the right thing by doing this? Thinking of expanding the horse theme to cover eyfs areas - what do you think?

[madasahatter]

Sounds good, lots of children have imaginary friends. Like a lot of things it is a phase which can be short-lived or last quite a long time. I have always thought it best to go along with imaginary friends as sometimes it can be a way of children sorting out problems for themselves.
I think the horse theme is a great idea.

[sarah707]

Awww it's a lovely phase...

Great idea to follow her interests

[charleyfarley]

Great idea to involve the horse theme

Charley has an imaginary teacher, think it's because she loves school work so much. Her Sir often comes for tea and lives in various different houses, apparantly he moves a lot because he can't be bothered to do any repairs to the house he's in She even goes to pretend school at the weekend.

Carol xx

[sue]

My little one has two cats only happen in last month, we had two cats last year (aged 18 years) both died within 6 months l still miss them greatly and think little one does, his way of accepting they have gone to cat heaven.

[Spangles]

My son used to pretend that he was Diego and he used to talk to Dora and hold her hand, I used to have to hold her hand sometimes too!

It was very funny. Only lasted about a month though and then he just seemed to forget about it. I even heard him telling a mum at the park that his name was Diego! She must have thought I had weird taste in names!

[marion123]

hi my daughter had a imaginary friend from the age of 3 he was called be-be then one day when she was at school my son came in from playing in the wendy house and said be- be is coming for tea i nearly fainted as he never knew of my daughter imaginery friend so both mine had them they do grow out of it but i had to set place mats for tea etc

[Mollymop]

I think the "theme" of Sophie is a good idea! I have never known someone with an imaginary friend so I can't really say much more.

[balloon]

My youngest had an invisible freind too, and an invisible dog(whoI had to hold just the same, lol!). I'd forgotten all about it until you posted this and it's brought a smile just thinking about it.

It fizzled out years ago but when it was 'real' to him I just played along, seeing it as a gmae he had made up. Nowadays he has a fantastic imagination and is able to make up stories and poems for English far easier than his older brother - possibly the two are related... (the invisible friend and the story telling ability not the brothers, lol!)