Confused About Your Kid’s Imaginary Friend? Know Here How To Deal

Montessori Academy of Arcadia
3 min readAug 8, 2019

Have you found out that your kid is talking with someone when no one is around? Or is he or she mentioning about a friend who actually does not exist? Do you think that event quite suspicious and creepy that reminds you of the movie titled Conjuring? Then let us just assured you; it is pretty simple and normal actually. Even Peppa Pig has an imaginary friend whose name is Leo the Lion. The animation makers also know that most of the children have someone or a group of friends.

Children between the age group of 3 years to 8 years generally play pretend games like a classroom and personify their dolls, plushes and other toys. Among them, around 40 percent of students take this game to the next level and create an imaginary friend stays with them around the clock.

Many parents of the Preschool Duarte, CA complain about this and seek the help of the teachers even the child psychologists. But in reality, it is a completely natural phenomenon among the kids. They don’t only have the invisible companion in the form of human only, it can be an animal or fantasy creature or even spirits. It has been found in research that the boys have an only male invisible friend but girls can have both male and female imaginary friends.

Your Child’s Relationship with the Imaginary Friend

When the child is involving in a pretend play, there are generally two types of relationship they have:

Hierarchical relationship: It is the form of the relation with personified objects like a doll or stuffed toys.

Egalitarian Relationship: It is a form of relationship with the invisible friend

In this first type of relationship, the child is in charge of the activities and takes care of the thing as mother or teacher. In the latter type of relationship, they are working as the peer with whom they have a better understanding of friendship.

What is the role of the parents with their kids’ imaginary friends?

It has been found that the children who have imaginary friends are actually quite sociable and there is no other reason than fun to do this. The children always like to have an adult-like conversation and this is nothing but finding a way for it.

As the parents, you should not react or restrict your kid to do so. You must take it just like any other behavior of them. If you are enjoying the chitchat, then you can encourage them to introduce the friend to yours. It will be better to foster the relationship by acknowledging the existence of the friend. You can give them a meal, space, tell them stories, etc. It is a great way to boost the creativity and imaginary skill of your child through this storytelling activities.

In case, you oppose this behavior of your child, then the risk of conflict will be higher. It is not advisable to limit the imagination of the toddlers.

Fortunately, the most number of children already know that the imaginary friend is not real and they are not comfortable to take them to church or Preschool Duarte, CA. So, you must enjoy the time of pretend game that will automatically fade away with time.

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Montessori Academy of Arcadia

Montessori Academy of Arcadia offers quality preschool and daycare services in Arcadia and Monrovia in California.