Imaginary or Pretend?

A few weeks back, my blogger friend Missuz J wondered aloud about her kid’s imaginary friends. I never had any myself, nor many of the flesh-and-blood variety, and the idea of them has been kicking around in my head. As a result, I started paying more attention to Liv’s imaginary playmates.

Well, maybe not imaginary. The term she uses is “pretend.” And there is kind of a distinction.

Liv’s pretend friends are all co-opted from reality to some extent, and much more so of late. I started paying attention when she went on her Mary Poppins kick, and suddenly I had to make room for Jane and Michael Banks in the backseat of the car when we drove anywhere. She and Jane and Michael played hide-and-seek and cleaned the nursery and kept each other busy for hours at a time.

Then came the American Idol judges. That was a bit more disconcerting, but only mostly because I’m not a fan of Idol. First she’d set up three chairs in her bedroom, dress up in a princess costume and sing along to her Farkle McBride CD for them. Soon, however, they broke out of their real-world roles – seems Paula had a tendency to run off and get herself in trouble, requiring rescue from waterfalls and lava caves by Randy, Simon Cowell and Liv.

Then it started to get weird.

She had a boy from school over for a play date, and they started playing rescue. This time the object of rescues was the mother of another schoolmate. The two of them ran around the park across the street rescuing pretend Cynthia B from lava sharks and the island called Skull for over an hour.

It tickled me, of course, because I hadn’t really seen that type of imaginary friend play before.* This led me to what turned out to be a colossal mistake the next day. As Liv and I were walking into school, we ran into Cynthia B and her daughter, and I mentioned to Cynthia that she had been an imaginary friend the day before.

This embarrassed Olivia to no end. In the weeks since, she has been shy and ashamed in front of Cynthia, previously one of her favorite preschool parents. I felt like a total jerk, while still certain in the knowledge that it wouldn’t be the last time I embarrassed my child.

Anyway, the embarrassment in front of the real Cynthia B didn’t stop Liv from playing with pretend Cynthia. In fact, Cynthia was quickly joined by pretend versions of another parent, Sue K, and both Cynthia and Sue’s daughters, as well as the boy that had been part of the initial series of Cynthia rescues. Rescuing, in fact, has remained the dominant theme, with pretend Audrey, pretend Clare and pretend Nathan helping Liv rescue Cynthia from lava caves and getting sick Sue to the hospital.

It all seemed a little odd and amusing, but this week it kind of edged toward creepy. Liv was making her usual rescue plans with the pretend gang when she mentioned two other names from preschool, a kid and a parent. When she noticed me listening, she looked at me and said “Oh, Daddy, did you know I have a Courtney and an Ivy now, too?”

See, there is something about this casual addition to her flock that gave the whole endeavor a Stepford, collectable action figures, Body Snatchers vibe, like she has a parallel world inhabited by people from her real world, but stripped of will and subservient to Livvie whims.

I know that’s a little overdramatic, and my wife assures me she is just being creative, but the one fact that pushes me closer to concern is that she seems to be struggling a little with undirected play these days. She stands at the fringe watching, hesitant to just join in, sometimes comes home and tells us that she couldn’t find anyone to play with. I worry that she has begun making clones of real world friends because those relationships are easier, allow her to exert a control she feels is missing at school.

I’m sure it is a lot about me. I don’t want to see Olivia go through the childhood that I did. When loneliness was better than the torment that was the alternative. My propensity for eliciting strong negative reactions in people isn’t recent. In third grade there was a gang in Medina, NY, twenty kids strong, whose whole mission, reason for being, was to hate me and hiss “disgrace” at me at every opportunity (Aaron Slack, one day we will meet again and I’m gonna kick you in the balls).

So, I worry. I worry that she’s already developing defense mechanisms for problems I hoped she wouldn’t have. I’m worried that the choice of making pretend copies of real people instead of imaginary people shows a lack of creativity (which, I know, makes me sound like THAT kind of parent, but so what if I am?).

Maybe what I really fear is that a pretend version of me is in the offing.

I’m sure it is just a phase, like the year when she had to hear Stray Cat Strut at least once a day. But, worrying seems my natural state of being as a dad. And there’s always something new.

* - One exception being that the parents of one of my favorite kids in class told me that she sometimes likes to play at being Olivia, and makes her parents be Tricia and I. But, when it is someone else’s kid, its just cute. And oddly flattering.