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I never had an imaginary friend as a kid.  But, I did have a great imagination.  My brother and I would play for hours and hours together pretending I was the teacher and he was the student or I was the cook and he was the customer. Yes, I thought it was sooo much fun to take orders from my little brother and make him whatever he wanted for lunch.  Then I would serve it to him on a special plate and clean up after him!  He must have been laughing inside!  We also spent countless hours building things with legos and of course acting out stories with my cabbage patch dolls.

Now, I have such fun watching Little E.  He has an amazing imagination!  I love watching him play with his pirate ship and see the concentration on his face and hear the different voices he uses for the pirate and the captain.  And of course, the train table provides endless hours of fun and imaginary stories.  He also has great conversations on his cell phone.  But, the latest, is his imaginary friend.  Well, he’s not completely imaginary, I guess I should say he is Little E’s invisible friend.  Little E has a cousin that he adores.  Actually, I think he half way worships him.  His cousin is 5 years old and Little E wants to do everything his cousin does.  About a week ago, his cousing started “appearing” around the house.

“Little E, let’s sit down and have breakfast.”  “Mommy, cousin wants to eat too.  See, he’s sitting right beside me.”  O-k.  “Mommy, ask cousin if he wants to read a story too.”  Or “Mommy, cousin is all done with dinner, can I be ’scused, too?” 

The appearance of his “cousin” is becoming very common and my Mom said Little E has started doing it at her house, too.  I guess this is normal and it’s kind of cute.  But, I don’t know how much my husband and I should play along.   So far, he hasn’t used his “cousin” to blame things on.  I wonder if any of your kids have imaginary friends and how you handle it.  Do you “talk” to the friend when your child asks you too?  Move over when you’re sitting in the seat that is already taken by the “friend”?  I assume this is all very normal and part of growing up.  The only thing has me the tiniest bit concerned is that Little E’s cousin is moving this weekend half away across the country.  We will go from seeing him twice a week to twice a year.  I wonder if his cousin will start “appearing” more when Little E misses seeing him.  If so, is this a healthy way of dealing with his sadness and should I just go with it?

For now, I’m not necessarily encouraging it, but I am playing along.  Little E knows he’s just pretending and until his invisible cousin starts getting blamed for things around the house, I’m going to consider it harmless and part of the fun of being three!