One thing I enjoy about toddlers is their ability to imagine things. I love it when pretending becomes a part of their play.
Last week, Max acquired an imaginary key. He puts it in his pocket, then takes it out and gives it to someone, and they put it in their pocket, then they give it back to Max who puts it in his pocket. Max loves it when everyone plays along, and it keeps him happily entertained for quite a while.
Each of my children has had imaginary friends. CJ would pretend to have several of the characters from Sesame Street over to play, and Brielle would get daily visits from at least one of the Disney princesses.
Aaron was more creative with his imaginary buddy. He created in his mind a friend he called "Gumba" This guy was taller than Daddy, and he was yellow. He wore yellow clothes, and had yellow hair and yellow eyes. He sounded kind of scary to me, but he was Aaron's best friend for quite a while. He was quite mischevious too. Any time anything was lost, broken, flooded or flushed, Aaron made sure to tell us that Gumba was responsible.
My favorite "imagination story" happened when CJ was 5 and Brielle was 3.
Brielle walked into the room and pretended to put something on her head.
"Look, I have a Barbie birthday party hat"
"So what" said CJ.
"Well, I have a Barbie birthday party hat, and you don't"
CJ pretends to grab the hat off of her head and puts it on his head.
"Now I have the Barbie birthday party hat" he taunted, "and you can't have it back!"
Brielle begins screaming, and jumping up to grab the (imaginary) hat off of his head.
CJ kept knocking her away saying "NO, it's mine now, you can't have it!"
Brielle screams louder.
I look at CJ and say "Come on, don't tease her" to which he sings "Look, I have the hat! Look I have the hat!"
Brielle has now been reduced to tears, so I have this great idea, I PRETEND to hand Brielle a new hat "Look honey, here's another Barbie birthday party hat"
She screams "NO, I WANT THAT ONE!!" pointing to her brother's head.
I pretend to grab the stupid imaginary hat off of CJ's head and hand it to Brielle, and CJ says "You didn't get it mom, I still have it!"
More tears from Brielle.
I look at CJ and say "WHAT IN THE HECK DO YOU WANT WITH A BARBIE BIRTHDAY PARTY HAT ANYWAY?!?!?!?"
Then I realized that they had sucked me into this whole ridiculous mess, and I was now trying to referee a fight over something that didn't exist.
Has anyone else ever had their children fight over an imaginary object?
7 comments:
Good morning... first off... thanks for visiting my blog the other day! Second - your post is hysterical!! I remember doing things like that as a kid... I think the worst one for us was when I pretended to take my son's nose... you know, you give it a little squeeze and then tell them "I've got your nose". He burst into tears and cried... I tried to show him that I couldn't REALLY take his nose and that his nose was firmly attatched to his face, but he wouldn't stop crying till I had put the "nose" from my hand back onto his face!!
Alas, my child is still too young for such exciting antics. I have to settle for laughing when she falls asleep in front of her door, so my husband has to drag her away so we can put her back in her bed.
Hilarious!
I stopped by from Damama's At It Again!
I'll probably be by on occasion.
Ha ha ha ha ha! Have you been watching my kids? Because - we live this all too frequently. I blogged about it once, my children, fighting with each other in duck language. They were playing with rubber ducks and they started to quack at each other and it eventually escalated into violence. When I asked what happened, Abby said, "He QUACKED at me." Sigh.
Oh my gosh, NO, I haven't had this happen yet! Thank GOD! We have enough REAL-thing fights going on around here! My boys are 4, 3, 3 & almost 2... Here's to hoping I stick to breaking up fights over real toys (thought I'd never say THAT!)...
Great post! Me and Mammy tussle once and awhile over imaginary money but I don't recall none of the younguns ever fightin' over something imaginary - even though it wouldn't have surprised me considerin' the things they did/do fight about.
Lol, that's funny. my 4.5 year old has quite the imagination, too. Isn't it great?
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