by Mary Pat Withem

Created on: February 19, 2009

Your child has come to you to introduce you to their imaginary friend. What is your first reaction? Are you able to play along or do you get angry and tell them there's nothing there? Of course we don't see their imaginary friend the way they do but playing along can really be good for your relationship with your child.

Being an adult we lose our ability to have imagination. One of the reasons why we don't have as much imagination as our children is because we've outgrown the stage where there's the freedom of expressing oneself without any fear of judgment. Imagination fuels a lot of things and one of the things is creativity.

Not only would an imaginary friend fuel a child's imagination, an imaginary friend might help them learn some things that we may not think to educate them in. Sometimes people are afraid that if they allow their children to have imaginary friends their social skills would decrease however that is false.

Maybe the child will learn to "share" with others through sharing with their imaginary friend and learn how to be a team player. Sometimes we don't codone this kind of behavior for we don't know what would happen later in life however it's not necessarily a bad thing to allow a child to be a child for once.

Children are children only once in their lives and the one time to take advantage of that is when they're a child. Learning new things everyday is part of beign a child and not only would an imaginary friend allow them to learn how to share but also it can reduce loneliness. For an adult to determine that a child should not have the ability to have some imagination is to tell the child that they need to grow up.

This issue is just like the story of peter pan. Sure, he lived in neverland however that story gives children the chance to dream of the impossible and dream up things that may one day fuel their ability to be a great artist or painter or even a film producer. Writing and expressing yourselves is another thing that could really be fueled from imagination.

An imaginary friend may work more to their benefit than against. Boundaries are important to set with children which is something most parents agree on and if an imaginary friend does start to prevent a child from playing with other children or living their life as "normally" as possible then that is where it can become harmful.

Encourage children to have an imagination, imaginary friends come with the territory.

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