[blparent] Creativity and Imaginary Friends

[Veronica Smith]

Sarah souns just like Gab.  Gab had imaginary friends until she started
first grade.  Infact She still talks about her pet fly now and then.  Don't
worry, that's her creative side coming out.  I believe Gab started with baby
Bop, her first real friend (imaginary) right around 3.  I thought it was
strange, so we kind of forced her into naming a bear that, but even when the
bear wasn't around, baby bop was.   Then we had a squirrel friend who was
always causing mischief, but I can't remember his name (maybe Hammy)  and
then we had fifi the fly.  Gab was terrified of insect and there was a fly
on her, she began to scream, terrified of the fly and I said, it's a
friend," and it became fi fi.  Then after that every time someone tried to
kill a fly, she'd yell, that's fifi and we'd have to convince her that fi fi
was not there and that was a bad fly.  The Dr said it was all  normal.  V

-----Original Message-----
From: blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Jo Elizabeth Pinto
Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2010 10:41 PM
To: NFBnet Blind Parents Mailing List
Subject: [blparent] Creativity and Imaginary Friends

Hi.  I was wondering when you all first noticed imagination in your kids.
Sarah is just now two and a half, and she's really amazed me lately with
some of the stuff she's come up with.

First it was Maggie.  A couple of months ago, Sarah saw her reflection in a
computer monitor on my desk, and even though she knows herself by sight in a
mirror, that reflection became Maggie.  Sarah won't mention Maggie all the
time, but now and then, she'll greet her on the way past the desk.

Then, in the last couple of weeks, Sarah started talking about a pink cake
on the wall of a garage near our condo.  She came up with a whole story
about how somebody was carrying a pink cake and crashed it into the wall.  I
asked a sighted friend if she saw anything unusual on that wall, and she
said there was a big splotch of pink paint, probably graffiti.  She said it
was "little girl frosting" pink.  So that's how the pink cake came to be.

Last week, Sarah and I were outside, and she said there were baby animals
under the big pine tree in the front yard.  She led me by the hand to
investigate, and the baby animals--horses, lions, birds, monkeys--turned out
to be pine cones.  I tried to explain to her what the pine cones really
were, but to her, they were baby animals.  So she decided we couldn't leave
the baby animals all alone, and she wanted to take them to see another
imaginary character--a yellow farmer--which it turns out is the fire plug at
the edge of our parking lot.  I don't know what the neighbors must have
thought of the two of us walking back and forth, back and forth, carrying
pine cones from the tree to the fire plug--Sarah could only hold a few
animals at a time, and she wasn't interested in my help.  She arranged the
animals around the fire plug farmer and wasn't satisfied till she'd gotten
all of them into his care.

I've really had fun watching Sarah's imagination blossom, so I'm wondering
if all of these elaborate stories and characters are something common to
most children, or if this is anything I need to be concerned about.

Jo Elizabeth
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