Around the nursery and preschool years, children's imaginations are hard to separate from real life. In these periods, in addition, children begin to interact more fully with the world around them and sometimes new experiences and changes can make the imagination tend to create a new unreal friend with which to face these challenges: imaginary friends.
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An imaginary friend is an unreal and idealized companion, created by children's imaginations, who can possess any characteristics that they can fantasize about. Huge ears, impossible colors, mouse nose ... any property is valid in the imagination of a child when creating an imaginary companion.
For adults, talking, laughing and interacting with someone who does not exist is considered something negative, a warning sign that automatically suggests mental illness and / or hallucinations. However, children do this very commonly. In fact, according to some statistics, between a third and a half of the child population lives this experience, something completely normal and part of a healthy development.
The most common idea why it is often explained that children create imaginary friends is that this is due to a state of loneliness. That is, according to this hypothesis, children create playmates when they are bored or do not have other friends nearby. However, this idea is very controversial, since there are many other reasons that can be applied according to different circumstances and that in fact, are usually very beneficial for the development of the child.
Interaction with imaginary friends has a strong relationship with the development of social skills. When the child talks to a character that does not exist in real life, it usually appears that he is speaking to himself. The child in this case is practicing self-directed internal dialogue. A dialogue that helps you face problems and build self-confidence.
This is most clearly seen when children play with inanimate objects such as dolls or stuffed animals to which they give human characteristics. In this way they interact with them creating and experimenting with social roles from which they learn and help them to relate in real life.
In some cases, children can create imaginary friends to cope with periods of stress or emotional intensity. When the child finds himself in a situation that causes anxiety, such as a move, a new school or a separation, he can create an imaginary friend as a coping strategy. With this, the little one can share their emotions and cope with the pressure by focusing on a friend with whom to share that emotional overload..
Some researchers have suspected that the appearance of imaginary friends may be closely related to children's creativity. In a study carried out by Schaefer in 1969, it was suggested that early forms of role-making were related to high creativity during adolescence.
Later, another study carried out by Eva V. Hoff in 2005, stated that there was a correlation between having had imaginary friends in childhood and being highly creative later on. In 2009, the existence of a great relationship between having had this type of childhood imagination and having high creativity among fiction writers and adult actors was also studied..
However, Marjorie Taylor of the University of Oregon, found that these studies were not based on specific creative tasks with which to measure results, so she carried out research that proposed concrete tests to measure children's creativity, finding again that those who had or had had imaginary friends scored higher in these creativity tests. "It makes sense because having an imaginary friend is a very creative act," explains Taylor. "It involves a lot of imagination.
Having an imaginary friend during childhood is quite common and one that adults should not worry too much about. Talking with the child about his friend without prejudice can make us share a bond of trust and closeness. As we have explained previously, the use of imaginary friends can generate good results in terms of social skills and responds to causes that can sometimes be beneficial for the child's development..
However, there are cases in which the imaginary friend is a resource that the child uses excessively and with which he can even create strategies to avoid focusing on real life. For example, if the child claims that he has not cleaned his room because his imaginary friend does not, or blames him for something inappropriate that he has done, it may be necessary to make him understand that it is important to face his actions on his own. According to psychologist Kimberly Eckert, “Children can separate real life from fantasy. They know it's a game ".
Trying to confront the idea of the imaginary friend or forcing the child to abandon it is not appropriate, since it succeeds precisely in telling it, besides creating a gap between parents and children who do not feel understood. Talking with the child about the imaginary friend makes us create a bond with him, as well as understanding what his interests and fears are, which are usually reflected in fantasy.
The experimentation of this type of illusion usually disappears naturally when the child reaches the school stage. It is essential that in addition to giving them freedom to develop their own ideas, children also spend time enjoying themselves with real people, with friends, family and of course, their parents. Thus, little by little, the little ones will find real life more and more exciting and stimulating, gradually saying goodbye to their imaginary friends to explore and enter the real world.
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