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January 16, 2025 65 mins

In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the world of pretend play in childhood development and human consciousness.

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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
name is Robert.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
the third part in our series on pretend play, the
type of play that involves non literal understanding. So when
a child or an adult, but it's usually a child.
When a child runs around the living room saying room, room,
I am a truck. Or when they turn a cardboard

(00:37):
box that a package came in into a house and
live in the house and do things in there and
talk about the tiny people who live in there with them.
When they pretend to feed and care for a plastic
dinosaurs if it were a baby, When they have adventures
with an imaginary friend. All of these are forms of
pretend play. It's played that takes anything in the world

(00:57):
and the situation in an object in the cell health
as something other than literally what it is now. In
the past two episodes, we got into a number of
fascinating ideas and concepts from the academic study of pretend play.
We talked about the standard schedule on which pretend play
appears to emerge, usually with the first type of play

(01:19):
being object substitution, So you know, this stick is a sword,
this dinosaur toy is a baby, this remote control as
a phone. We talked about the evidence for possible links
between pretend play and the development of complex cognitive capacities
like symbolic understanding, counterfactual reasoning, and theory of mind. And

(01:41):
in part two we talked about some of the existing
research on imaginary friends and imaginary companions, how prevalent they
are within and across different cultures, how they work, what
different forms they take, and what children believe they know.
And today we're back to talk about more.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
When you mentioned how work, it instantly made me wonder
if there are some imaginary friends who have jobs. I
would not be surprised to find that some imaginary friends
do have jobs, but I don't think I read anything
about that in particular.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
Oh well, based on what I've been reading, there are
a good number of observations of imaginary friends doing what
the child themselves cannot. So you know, there's a kind
of vicarious attainment of life goals or vicarious participation in
activities through the use of imaginary friends. So maybe if
in the same way that the child can pretend they

(02:34):
can like play mom and dad and go to work
even though they're not actually going anywhere. They could also
have the imaginary friend have a job, and that's another
way of simulating, right.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah. Yeah, Now, as we discussed in the last episode,
and I would encourage everyone to go back and listen
to the previous episode. The previous two episodes actually take
these in order because a lot of the things we're
discussing they may stand alone, but we're also build upon
what we talked about previously. But one of the things
we talked about with imaginary friends and or imaginary companions

(03:10):
is that, of course they seem to be widespread and
fairly common, but there's a lot to discuss about samples
and where you're looking and also even time. So is
this a capacity that all children have and is that

(03:30):
capacity not really maxed out in every culture and certainly
at every time in human history. I don't know. There
are some interesting cases to be made for that.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
Yeah. In fact, that very thing might come up with
some stuff I want to talk about later in this episode.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yeah, So, as we roll into what we're going to
talk about next, it's just important to bear in mind
that there are a lot of caveats involved here, A
lot of the research. Most of the research is certainly
focused on children in the West, and therefore it's not
necessarily allowing for cultural differences that may be in play

(04:04):
regarding how these trends are expressed in given children. Now,
having talked about imaginary friends and imaginary companions, we've touched
on one very fascinating phase in the imaginative lives of children. Storytelling,
of course, weaves its way through this and other examples

(04:24):
of imaginative play that we've discussed so far, even in
its simplest forms. Right dinosaur is hungry for crayons and
therefore eats crayons.

Speaker 3 (04:33):
Is a sort of story, sometimes a comedy, sometimes a tragedy.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
It depends on the exact line graph of how the
plot flows. Right, is the dinosaur getting everything it wants
on it and its lead up to downfall or is it?
Or is it just one disappointing meal after the other,
and eventually it will rise to the top of a
crayon buffet?

Speaker 3 (04:55):
And I think something about does it end in a marriage?

Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, it may. Marriages sometimes do occur for toy dinosaurs. Yeah,
so you know, our ability to engage in storytelling, of course,
only becomes more and more refined as we get older.
Even children but also adults who do not think of
themselves as storytellers inevitably engage with the power of storytelling

(05:19):
on a daily basis. We've talked about this before in
the show. We craft events in our lives into stories
that we relate to others and to ourselves. We come
to live our lives and reflect on ourself as a
character in a narrative to varying degrees.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
You know, this is just reminding me of I think
an episode or a couple of episodes that we did
years ago. Now I forget what it's even called, but
we were exploring the work of a particular philosopher who
was this was one of the most like perverse and
yet persuasive ideas we've ever encountered on the show. It
was pursuing the idea that ultimately fiction is bad for us.

(05:59):
And I remember was like they this guy made a
fairly persuasive case that like, it's not very good for us,
you know, like it causes us to think about the
world and incorrect ways and makes allowances for bad behavior
and all this kind of stuff. And yet it's just like, well,
we're not getting rid of it, and I like it
too much, so it's like too bad.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah. Yeah, there's a whole discussion to be had about
how life isn't story shaped, but we often compare it
to stories and end up with expectations based on those stories.
So yeah, it's uh, it's complex, and I think, you know, honestly,
I feel like there's there's give and take on both sides. There,
Like stories and storytelling enrich our lives in so many ways,

(06:41):
but yes, they can you know, also lead to false expectations, disappointment,
and and and again. Coming to back what we're directly
talking about here, Yeah, thinking about yourself as a character
in a narrative, you know, can maybe get into maladaptive
territory at times.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
But we're not going to stop.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
No, no, why would we stop now? There are many
different forms of narrative activities to be found in childhood,
and they range from the nonfictional to the fictional, from
social to private, from acted out to linguistic, and all
with varying levels of character and plot development. There might
not be any plot development in the saga of Dinosaur

(07:22):
Eats Crayons, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have some
form of story to it, right, right, But one particularly
interesting form of imaginative storytelling can be found in middle childhood,
generally around the ages of eight through twelve. And in
this we explore the world of paracosm. So this goes
beyond the notion of an imaginary companion and it transcends

(07:47):
into the realm of an imaginary world.

Speaker 3 (07:50):
So if the single imaginary companion or imaginary friend is
the equivalent of a fiction writer creating a character, this
is the equivalent of world building exactly.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yeah, And obviously this is a rich area to dream about,
and indeed to tell stories about. C. S. Lewis's Narnia
and mister rogers neighborhood of make Believes certainly come to
my mind. I'd throw Alice in Wonderland in there as well,
while we're at it. And these are probably some of
the examples that resonate with folks who grew up in
the same decade as me on a similar media diet.

(08:21):
But there of course far more number of these that
you can think of any number of these. There are,
of course, more concrete ideas of actual fantasy worlds that
one might venture into that are at the same time
linked to the concept of creatively imagined worlds. You can
also look to any magical treatment of characters crossing over

(08:42):
into the worlds of books, TV, and movies, as well
as so many different sci fi, virtual reality, dream walking scenarios,
all creative treatments on the idea that imagine worlds become
a place in the mind that we might retreat to play,
dream and seek soft.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
You know, just now thinking about it, it struck me
how many of these stories about characters who want to
escape into an imaginary world focus on showing the characters
struggles and and unhappiness about real life. You know, it's
there in the Never Ending Story, it's there. And I

(09:21):
don't know why. This is the other example that came
to mind for me, But the Last Action Hero, you know,
there's just like it's just like, oh, well, real life,
you know, it's full of troubles, but there's this other
world that's so much more interesting and exciting and better.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Yeah, there's so many examples of there's so many different
like subgenres of it, like the changing channels variations you see,
and I think at least a handful of not several
different movies, especially the nineties, where oh I'm sucked into
the television again, I'm going from TV channel to TV channel,
you know, and you know, you can even get into
things like well Star Trek in general as again a

(10:00):
fictional universe we might escape into imaginatively. But also they
have the Holo deck in there, which is its own
form of paracosm within a paracosm.

Speaker 3 (10:09):
Yeah, that's right. But I just brought it up because
I think it's interesting that in reality. I don't think
one need be unhappy with real life in order to
enjoy thinking about alternate worlds. But this is like a
thing that we sort of go to in fiction when
we're sketching this character who wants to escape.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
No, no, it does, certainly it does come up. One
source I was looking as a twenty eighteen Artifact magazine
article by one George James and Jane cites child psychologist
Gwynn Abin, who argues that when faced with trauma, children
and adolescents may fall back in their development, returning to
a place where they felt more safe and quote a

(10:49):
paracosm is similar, the goal being to step out of
reality because it is too difficult to process. Now I
agree with you, and I think other things I've read
backs that up the idea that you may see this
some of the time, certainly, but you don't need to
have something in particular you're escaping to engage in paracosm,
to have an imagined world that you're dreaming yourself into

(11:12):
and building out in your mind, you know, especially during
these vital years.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
Yeah, so it might in fact be one way people
get there, but it's not the only way exactly.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
That's my redone it anyway.

Speaker 3 (11:25):
Yeah, sorry to interrupt your flow though.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
No, no, no, no, But I think it is worth
noting as well that this is this sort of thing.
The energy of this doesn't necessarily go away in the
human experience. Obviously. Adults are certainly quite capable of escaping
into their own imagined worlds in plenty of perfectly healthy ways,
as well as some potentially less healthy ways. We discussed
the idea of maladaptive day dreaming on the show in

(11:48):
the past, so you could line that concept up with
some of this. But yeah, I mean, on any given day,
I challenge listeners out there, how many different imaginary worlds
have you engaged with so far today? In one form
or another, and you know, I was just like, I
don't have a firm count in my head, but I
feel like it's been at least five, you know. So

(12:10):
you know, our lives are full of imaginary spaces. It
just depends on how much time, what sort of engagement
we're getting into there, and so forth.

Speaker 3 (12:19):
Well, yeah, that does raise an interesting question, like how
much engagement is generally required for it to be thought
of as paracosm play. I would assume just like reading
a book is not usually would not usually qualify as
engaging with paracosms, or would it.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Well, the stricter definition of paracosms, as mentioned in that
Artifact magazine article by James, is that it would be
a paracosm would have to adhere to the idea that quote,
the formation of the world must occur within childhood or
early adolescence and in many cases continued on into adulthood.
Doesn't have to continue on into adulthood, but at least

(12:56):
like the memory of it often does. So generally we're
looking looking at this specific time. You know. You can
certainly people dream up very rich imagined worlds as adults,
but we might think of that differently because it's not
emerging out of this key time period in middle childhood
and early adolescence.

Speaker 3 (13:16):
And it sounds to me, based on that definition, like
something about the paracosm experience is usually taken to have
a kind of daydreaming aspect, like the child is directly
participating in the construction of this imaginary world and thinking
about it, apart from just say, participating in a story
written by somebody else.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
Right right, though there are some connections to pre existing work,
as we'll get into. So the other paper that I
turned to to understand this topic is a twenty twenty
paper published in the journal Childhood Development by Marjorie Taylor
at All titled Paracosms The Imaginary Worlds of Middle Children. Now,
first of all, no one is denying the existence of

(13:59):
paric and children. There's there's plenty of evidence, plenty of
reports on this, but exactly what we can draw from
the accounts and how it all factors into childhood development
requires a bit more effort and varies somewhat in the
specific theories. During middle childhood, some children develop and or adapt,
so it doesn't have to be a world that's created

(14:20):
completely wholesale, And I think ultimately, you know, that's a
lot of pure imagination to expect from adult creatives, much
less children.

Speaker 3 (14:32):
But dealing with something more like fan fiction here.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yeah, yeah, and I mean you can make a case
that everything's fan fiction to some degree, right, but but
but yeah, it doesn't have to be created wholesale, but
it's a rich imagined world that may entail. Each world
may entail its own government, geography, language, culture, associated artifacts.
A lot of these worlds have particular names, so it

(14:57):
gets it gets very deep. Like you know, apps may
be involved, either mental or actually recreated physically. Now, what
are the percentages you're probably wondering. You know, we talked
about the percentages for imaginary friends in the previous episode
and those were quite high, based again on the sample
groups generally in the West. Yeah, the percentages here. I

(15:22):
think we'll be able to grind the numbers down a
little bit in a minute here. But the percentages either
referenced in the text or from other studies or produced
by the authors in this study range from three to
twelve percent to sixteen to seventeen percent. And in individual
sample groups you see some much higher percentages, like up

(15:43):
into the forties. But so generally, just to sum it up,
it seems like there's a lower percentage of paracosms compared
to imaginary companions or imaginary friends.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
Yeah. In some of the Western sample data, we were
looking at somewhere between one third to two thirds of
children having some form of imaginary companion, depending on how
strict your definition is.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
Yeah, So, Joe, I have to ask, we talked about
imaginary friends in the last episode in our own experiences
or lack they're off with them, did you have any
paracosms or something you think might constitute a paracosm when

(16:31):
you were younger.

Speaker 3 (16:32):
Well, I guess again this would be a question of definitions.
I absolutely did dream up imaginary worlds, but I always
remember thinking of them as ideas for stories I wanted
to write. So it wasn't like I was dreaming of
living in these imaginary worlds or say playing like, oh here,

(16:54):
you know, here I am in my imaginary worlds. As
long as I can ever remember thinking about these places
I would dream up, I was thinking about them as
stories that I was creating.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
Okay, well, you know, I don't know that that would
necessarily disqualify any of this, because certainly as we'll explore
there are examples of paracosms certainly becoming written created works,
or you know, some sort of a creative endeavor later
on in life. For my own part, I remember two
specific things, like, in around third grade, I had some

(17:25):
sort of an elaborate scenario going on in my head
that was based loosely on something from the Gi Joe
cartoon that involved like a space station, as well as
a snippet of an animated film i'd seen part of
on TV, which I would later come to believe was
likely a snippet from Nausica, something with the Giant Warriors,
but I didn't know what it was at the time.

Speaker 3 (17:44):
Well, what a privilege to have that as an inspiration
for your para cosm. And that's a yeah, that's a
good one.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
Now, this world had no name, and I even hesitate
to call it a world, but I would say that
it was a recurring imaginary space that I would often
go into, like I remember going into it at school
a lot. If I got a little bit bored or
distracted in school in third grade, that's where I would go.

(18:12):
And so that one comes to mind. And then in
junior high I had a world that was loosely inspired
by Ian Flux cartoons, oh, which was you know, pretty
exciting at the time. I hadn't seen a lot of
animation from outside of the US at the time, you know,
only a little bit of anime. And of course, you know,

(18:33):
this was a highly stylistic cartoon with graphic violence and
a lot of sex appeal. So and it was on MTV,
so I watched it like everything else on MTV at
the time.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
Well, this is really interesting. So in what sense exactly
were you mentally engaging with these paracosms. Were you like
just sitting there sort of mentally building them out, like
thinking about new details of them, or were you imagining
inhabiting them bottle or like do you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (19:01):
I know, not bodily. Maybe there was a certain amount
of bodily presence in the third grade example, but in
this junior high example, I was not there at all.
It was other characters, different factions, and you know, it
was like stuff sort of built on top of rough
Ian Flux inspiration, so.

Speaker 3 (19:21):
More equivalent to kind of like writing a fiction in
your head.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yeah, But at the same time, this was definitely a
time period when I was also you know, trying to
write things and thinking about things that could be made
into a short story or a book. And this was
never an idea that I pointed in that direction, you know,
you know I was, and I wouldn't even I wasn't

(19:45):
even exploring it in things like Dungeons and Dragons at
the time, which I was also a creative outlet then
as it is now. But yeah, based on some of
these parameters, I would think that maybe this second and
constitute some form of paracosm, though certainly not as rich
and elaborate as some of these other examples that I've

(20:07):
read about. You know, this is not a place. It
had a name, it didn't have a it didn't have
its own language, I had no maps, but it had
you know, rather distinct action sequences laid out.

Speaker 3 (20:18):
I would say, well, maybe we can come back to
this question later on. But yeah, this is making me
more and more curious about really what are the key
distinctions between having a paracosm and just say, writing a
fiction that you don't share with anybody else or maybe
the Judicia you know who knows.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
Yeah, well, I mean, as is pointed out in that
one definition, there's the idea that you might take it
on into adulthood and it becomes this cherished world that
you keep going. That is not the case with my
influx fan fiction or whatever it was, you know at
the time. I mean, some of the sensibilities that I
that are associated with that I've certainly you know, carried on.
You know, I still like the idea of life forms

(20:58):
growing on spaceships. I'm still like, you know, kick ass
female action heroes, that sort of thing. But you know,
this is not on the level of say like a
Middle Earth or something, you know, or where the seeds
of it were present in middle childhood imagination and then
carries on into you know, grown up creative endeavors.

Speaker 3 (21:19):
This made me just realize I might be able to
amend my earlier answer. This isn't This was never something
super elaborate, but I remember there were a few times
when I was a kid when I would wake up
from having a really good dream. I would be frustrated
that the dream was over and want to be able

(21:40):
to continue the dream. So I would just sort of
like try to remember the world and the scenario of
the dream and keep thinking about it, and usually it
would go away pretty quick anyway. But like I remember
there were a few I think that had similar contours.
Often they were about like discovering a secret passage or

(22:01):
a tunnel from my house that went somewhere really amazing.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
Oh nice. Yeah, I think that does line up with
some of the things you know, we're discussing here, and
is reference the role of dreams is referenced in that
Taylor at All paper.

Speaker 3 (22:16):
Yeah, though I don't think any of these ever really
continued for you know, more than a day or so.
But like I remember, at least a few of these
instances making a strong impression, even if I didn't continue
to develop the world or re engage with it. So
I don't know, I don't know where I fit into
this whole thing.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
I'm hoping we'll get some really robust examples from listeners.
I'm sure there are some para cosms out there that
they can write in about now. As the authors point out,
one of the first challenges to understanding all of this is,
of course, the history of our understanding of para cosms.
The earliest accounts all centered around nineteenth and twentieth century
authors who enjoyed tremendous success with their works, the likes

(22:56):
of the Bronte sisters they shared. The sisters shared three
different worlds named Gondel, Angria and Galdin. I'm not super
familiar with them, but yeah, they had not one, not two,
but three paracosms between them. Robert Louis Stevenson is another
j R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Desmond, Morris, Nietzsche. Also

(23:20):
Thomas de Quincy I've seen thrown in there as well.
And you know, obviously this can present a fallacy of
excellence when it comes to paracosms, the idea that well,
if you've got imaginary worlds in your middle childhood brain,
then you have everything. You just got your futures paved
for you. So not to discount the vividness of each
individual's dreams, but I think I think it's fair to

(23:42):
say that none of them achieved success solely on the
strength of their childhood imaginations, though I think it's likely
somewhere in the equation.

Speaker 3 (23:49):
Oh yeah, this seems like a kind of selection bias, right, Like, yeah,
you're just looking at famous authors who engaged in paracosms
when they were younger, but like you're not finding out
about all the people who had pair cosms, who didn't
become famous.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
Right right, And but at the very least these accounts
linked the concept with adult creativity, and we see subsequent
research coming back to that. So Robert Sylvie conducted UK
research in the eighties on the topic, finding a wide
variety of para cosms and self reports by adults. So
I believe he reached out via you know, publications and

(24:26):
was asking like, hey, write in to me, tell me
about your para cosms. This is what a paracosm is
slash was. And some of these were based on toys
or props, others more or less forged fresh from the
individual's mind. So there's you know, there's a wide variety there.

Speaker 1 (24:42):
You know.

Speaker 2 (24:42):
It's so this leads me to believe that you know,
loosely based on G. I. Joe cartoon can certainly count. Again,
it need not be just this, you know, rich original
imagined world, and some para cosms seemed quote to serve
as vehicles for storytelling and as a way to explore
real life interests. I believe the example that one of

(25:02):
the examples that Sylvie brought up was that of some
kids who were taking a foreign language class and then
therefore their para cosms had a lot to do with
imagined languages.

Speaker 3 (25:14):
Oh okay, but his.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
Work indicated that paracosms peaked at nine and diminished by
age twelve.

Speaker 3 (25:20):
Oh and that would line up with because earlier you
said the most common range of paracosm activity is like
eight to twelve. So I guess it would like peak
by nine years old or so.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
Yeah. Now, creativity researcher Robert rut Bernstein explored the concept
in subsequent decades, factoring it into his interdisciplinary view of creativity,
exploring the idea that para cosms were perhaps more likely
in recipients of the MacArthur Fellowship, though of note, he
was also a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and had

(25:51):
pero cosms as a kid, So you know, that seems
to be where that idea came from. But you know,
he speculated that para cosms might be more prevalent in
individuals who later pursued a creative and artistic career. To
be surprising, Yeah, to put some numbers on that, he
reported a rate of five to twenty six percent in

(26:13):
MacArthur Fellowship winners, as opposed to a rate of three
to twelve percent in the world at large. Okay, However,
Taylor at all that main paper I was referencing earlier
stressed that by the year twenty twenty, at any rate,
most of what we'd put together on paracosms were from
adults looking back on their childhoods and not from children
in the age range associated with the height of paracosms.

Speaker 3 (26:36):
Ah. Okay, So there could be a strong bias in
the data we're getting based on what adults remember as
opposed to what children are actually doing with their minds
and their time.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
Yeah. Like I don't know, just you know, shooting from
the hip here, but oftentimes we're looking back in our childhood,
were presented with an idea like paracosms, and we're like,
that sounds great. I I wish I had one of
those what do I recollect that I might be able
to shoehorn into or into that category? You know, Like,
if I'm being critical, I have to like second guess
my own account here, Like that was daydreaming about something

(27:12):
related to a Gi Joe cartoon actually a paracosm, or
do I just like the idea that that was present
in my imagination at the time.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
Oh, we both now have just had the experience of
sitting here like half remembering our childhood thoughts. I'm trying
to say, does it fit the box or not?

Speaker 2 (27:27):
Yeah, So I mean not to say that, you know,
it's completely wrong or anything, but obviously it would add
to our understanding if we could also talk to children
who were right there in the thick of it, right
in the same way as we discussed imaginary friends. There's
a lot of most of the research into imaginary friends
and imaginary companions really focuses now on talking to both parents,

(27:50):
all the children, and the children themselves to sort of,
you know, play one against the other and see what
seems to be the case. Yeah, Taylor at All's work
attempts to remedy this a bit. Looking at some seventy
seven children ages eight through twelve, they conducted a pair
of studies consisting of a series of questions as well

(28:12):
as creativity and storytelling exercises and evaluations, as well as
at least questionnaires to the parents to also get their
view on everything. So they found that seventeen point two
percent of the children reported having para cosms, while ten
point one percent reported what they call pre para cosms.

(28:32):
So this would be a specific place, either partially or
wholly imagined, but with little or no evidence of repeated
engagement with the place and or not much elaborated detail.
So I don't know, it's like a place you went
once in your head, or you work on a little bit,
but it's not there's nothing habitual about it.

Speaker 3 (28:51):
I guess, Oh, this sounds more like my dream examples,
Like I had a good dream once and then I
really kept entertaining that idea for I don't know, a
day or two, but it's not something that like stuck
with me throughout childhood.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
Yeah, nineteen percent engaged in pretend play, which we've been
talking about. Ten point one percent reported engagement with an
unelaborated pretend world from a book, movie, or video game.
So I don't think my Gi Joe example quite fits
that because it wasn't like one hundred percent Gi Joe.

(29:23):
But I can imagine it's very easy for children to
fall into this imaginative space of just engaging with a
franchise that you really like and imagine world that has
you know, already been presented to you pretty much wholesale,
like you you're in the Lord of the Rings. Well,
take your imagination there like Tolkien's created all the details
you need.

Speaker 3 (29:40):
Yeah, it's a prefab yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
Four point seven percent engaged in thoughts about a real
world place they had visited or would like to visit.
Those sound like darling children. I was never one of them,
but but yeah, yeah, it's like they went there before,
they have some experiences and they would like to go back,
or they're very fond of it and they imagine the experience.

(30:04):
So yeah, that sounds good all day.

Speaker 3 (30:07):
I dream of Abilene.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yeah yeah. Three point three percent reported dreams, so I
think in this we're maybe getting a little bit into
your dream example, and then forty three point eight percent
said no or provided no detail. So you know, based
on this one study, again, something like seventeen point two
percent of the kids had paracosms, and then less than

(30:32):
half had nothing. But then there's also some wiggle room
for things that were adjacent to para cosms. So what
does all of this mean. Well, the author's stress that
paracosms do seem distinct from imaginary companions. Imaginary friends are
friends you engage with, They are individuals, while the child's
role in a parocosm is more of creator and observer.

(30:53):
So it's not a world you're really active in. It's
more it's more world building. Like you said, some times
children seem to generate para cosms as realms associated with
a previous imaginary companion, but other para cosms had no
connection to previous imaginary companions. And while I don't think
they nailed this down specifically, I gather it's possible for

(31:15):
a child to engage in paracosms without ever having had
an imaginary companion to begin with. My self report would
seem to indicate this, unless again, I had an imaginary
companion at some point that I don't remember, and my
mom doesn't remember either, which is.

Speaker 3 (31:32):
Very likely, yes, totally possible.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
Here's some other general observations they make. They said, para
cosms are not always private and maybe shared among children.
We can go back to the example from the Bronte
Sisters earlier. Right, You don't have to keep it all
to yourself. You can share it with those around you,
and you can have like a you know, it's almost
like a role playing setting. At that point. The link
between paracosms and creativity seems to vary, perhaps more pronounced

(31:58):
when it comes to storytelling as opposed to other creative exercises.
So if someone were just say, oh, well, this person
had had a paracosm when they were younger, so you
know they are more creative than those around them, You
know that that would be incorrect. Though it's possible they
might have a slight advantage on some storytelling creativity exercises.

Speaker 3 (32:19):
Oh, that would also make sense to me not to
totally discount the idea that there might be some sort
of general creativity juice that is shared among the different
creative activities, but if one engages in paracosms, that sounds
to me more like practice toward experience in storytelling and
the writing of fiction than it does towards say, the
creation of music or of painting or something.

Speaker 2 (32:42):
Yeah, there may also be a correlation between paracosms and
decreased inhibition. The authors here point out that in other studies,
inhibitory control is also sometimes negatively correlated with creative behavior.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
That's interesting. This may be something they already controlled for.
But I would also wonder if, if if a decreased
role of inhibition makes a child more likely to tell
people about their paracosms as opposed to just making them
more likely to have them. So that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
That is a great point. Yeah, I don't know that
they got into it in this study so much, but
I think that's a good point because reporting, self reporting
is pretty much the main factor here. There's no other
way to know if there's an imagined world in there
than by asking the child or the adult.

Speaker 3 (33:27):
The child becomes like, I wonder if just on self
reports for all kinds of any unusual behavior, you would
get more. You would find a correlation that people with
lower inhibition are more likely to say they do it,
doesn't necessarily mean they're more likely to actually do it.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah. Yeah, However, they stress that surprising to them. Children
with para cosms don't really stand out from their peers
all that much. So it's easy to sort of have
this in your head, this idea of this, you're a
remarkably weird Victorian child, you know, spilling the beans about
their imagined world. But and you know, and again standing

(34:05):
out from the crowd in major ways. But they write quote,
they are similar to their peers in verbal comprehension, working memory,
and the most commonly used created creativity task, in which
children are asked to generate uses for a common object.
Where they do stand out is story is in storytelling,
Not only were the narratives of their paracosms impressive, they
invented more creative endings to a story than the endings

(34:27):
proposed by other children, a finding that was consistent across
the two studies and in the combined analysis. And on
top of that, on a sort of broader level, they
discuss how creative storytelling seems to have broad positive influence
on our ability to examine alternative viewpoints and engage in
different modes of empathy, and how paracosms and children may

(34:49):
relate to this.

Speaker 3 (34:50):
Well, we've already talked about the likely link and cognitive
development between pretend to play in general, of which paracosms
are sort of one extreme form, and counterfactual reasoning. I
would say that there is a broad overlap between counterfactual
reasoning and the ability to tell stories.

Speaker 2 (35:09):
Yeah, yeah, I think so. So it's yeah, this is
really fascinating stuff. You know, I honestly can't remember how
much we may have gotten into paracosms in discussing that
topic of maladaptive daydreaming. Maybe not at all, Maybe we
touched on it a little bit, But at any rate,
it's not a topic I'd really looked at recently, and
so this was and certainly not since twenty twenty when

(35:32):
this paper came out. So was, Yeah, this was really fascinating,
and I would of course love to hear anyone out
there who wants to write into the show and tell
us about your para cosms from your childhood, what you
took with you, what you left behind, what they seemed
to consist of, and how they sort of ranked up,
how they matched up with this ranking system that we
just ran.

Speaker 4 (35:51):
Through, Top five all time para cosms.

Speaker 3 (36:04):
All right, Well, the next thing I wanted to look
at on the subject of pretend play is the idea
of pretending across cultures. As we've discussed multiple times already,
pretend play research, like most psychological research, suffers from the
deficiency that subjects tested in the published literature, are not
a perfectly random sample of humankind as a whole, but

(36:26):
instead are predominantly from the weird cultures, western educated, industrialized, rich,
democratic cultures. The majority of these studies were conducted in
the United States, Canada, and Europe, so it would be
great to know more about pretend play across different cultures
around the world. Is it largely the same or are
there major cultural differences? Now, this was addressed a little

(36:48):
bit in one of the big papers that I've been
talking about in this series. This was a review of
the research on pretend play as of the year twenty
fifteen by a researcher named Dina Skolnik Weisberg, published in
widely interdisciplinary Reviews Cognitive Science. Again, that was the year
twenty fifteen, and Weisberg goes through a basic review of

(37:10):
the cross cultural literature and summarizes some of the main findings,
one of which is that some form of pretend play
in childhood really does appear to be universal. As far
as we can tell. This is something basically all children
in all cultures do. But there are some big differences,
and I'll get to that in a second. Another thing

(37:31):
that seems to be fairly universal is the developmental sequence.
So it appears that the sequence is roughly the same
across different cultures. Seems that it often begins on a
similar schedule, and I think this means that usually you
will get the first observable form being object substitution and
so forth. However, there are clearly major cultural differences in

(37:55):
pretend play that manifest in the amount of time spend
on it and the themes and contents of the play.
And this is interesting because it varies across national culture lines.
So you can look at, say, the cultures of different
countries and how the children do pretend to play in
each country, and you can find some differences, but you

(38:16):
also find subcultural differences within countries. And that's going to
lead us to one of the big things I want
to talk about in the section here. But to start off,
Weisberg sites one study that compared the play themes of
American children and Chinese children and found that while pretend
play exists in both cultures, obviously American children's play tended

(38:38):
to have more fantasy content. In these studies, fantasy content
is non realistic material, so things like talking animals, magical beings,
and so forth, and that the pretend play of Chinese children,
on average tended to have more realistic content. And within
some cultures or subcultures, it's clear that this is to

(39:03):
some extent influenced by the preferences and instruction of parents,
Like in some cultures and subcultures, parents will be more
or less encouraging of pretend play, and these tendencies affect
how much children do it. But even in cases where
parents are actively discouraging it, it really seems that it
doesn't stamp it out completely. And this brings me to

(39:26):
a paper that I wanted to talk about, which actually
shares one of the authors of one of the main
PARACOSM papers you were just talking about. This is a
paper that's looking at pretend play across different religious subcultures
within the United States. So the paper is called The
Influence of Culture on Pretend Play The Case of Mennonite Children,

(39:49):
published in the Meryl Palmer Quarterly in nineteen ninety eight
by Stephanie M. Carlson, Marjorie Taylor, and Gerald R. Levin.
And this study wanted to look at attitudes toward pretend
play within Mennonite society in two different branches of Mennonite culture.
One was looking at what they called Old Order Mennonites

(40:12):
and then also at New Order Mennonites. I can mention
differences in a second and then also comparing that to
non Mennonite Christians. Now apologies to the Mennonites for the
brevity of the summary of their culture I'm about to
give you know, you can't summarize the entire culture and
a sentence, but essentially, Mennonites are known for having a
fairly strict, community oriented way of life that emphasizes modesty,

(40:36):
hard work, and piety. Often Mennonites are engaged in agriculture
for a living, and they often deny the use of
certain modern technologies and limit interface with the broader culture,
though this varies within different branches of the Mennonite tradition.
The Amish are one well known branch of the Mennonite faith.

(40:57):
In the specific context of this study where they were
where the authors were framing New Order Mennonites versus Old
Order Mennonites, the New Order Mennonites seemed to be less
stringent in some particular areas of faith doctrine and social lifestyle. So,
for example, had apparently fewer sort of social conformity mechanisms
to enforce adherence to the social doctrine about about dress

(41:22):
and use of technology and things like that. And it
appears just based on the small sample of like looking
at the teachers in the study and what different technologies
they used, that the New Order Mennonites were engaging with
or were generally permitted to use more modern technology in
a wider range of scenarios than people in the Old Order.
So the survey of teachers found that like neither the

(41:44):
Old Order nor the New Order, Mennonites went to the
movies or had a TV at home, but the New
Order teachers were more likely to have electricity in the
home and to drive a car. So why focus on
the example of Mennonite children when looking for differences in
parental culture on how children engage in pretend play? Well,
there was already some background literature. The on Minnite attitudes

(42:09):
towards children's pretend play and toward fantasy. The authors say that,
in general, quote, acceptable reading material for Mennite children include
stories that represent an American rural way of life and
teach a moral lesson, such as the value of hard work.
Stories that have a fantasy orientation are considered unacceptable. The
Amish quote do not want their children to read fairy

(42:32):
tales or myths. Many object to any stories that are
not true, such as those in which animals talk and
act like people, or stories that involve magic, such as
the Pied Piper of Hamlin. And this is citing older
research by Hostetler and Huntington from nineteen seventy one, and
then the authors of this paper go on to mention
that the founder of the Mennonite faith Minno Simons, who

(42:55):
is a Catholic priest in the sixteenth century who became
an Anabaptist, and again the founder of this faith was
down on pretend play. Essentially said, parents, do not encourage
your children to engage in frivolous activities. Don't you know,
pretend is no good. The quote he said was quote wink,

(43:17):
not at their follies. The author is also stressed that
the Mennonites tend to believe that children should not just
be idols, should not just like have a lot of
free time to run around and do whatever that they
you know, they should be engaged in in structured productive time.
You know, they have schoolaying, and they have helping out
with things and so forth, and that it's detrimental to

(43:38):
them to be idle too much. And we've already talked
before about how sort of a free playtime alone may
be a significant factor in the development of different pretend
to play skills and the likelihood of developing certain pretend
to play elements such as imaginary companions. So this paper
has a couple of different studies and one of them

(43:59):
is comparing the behaviors and attitudes of school teachers toward
pretend play, and that was looking at Old Order Mennonite,
New Order Mennonite, and Non Mennonite Christian teachers, and then
also later looking at the directly observing the play of
children at recess to look for signs of pretend play

(44:19):
and see if there were differences between the three faith environments. Specifically,
when looking at the attitudes of the adult school teachers,
they expected to find that the Mennonite teachers would have
more negative attitudes toward pretend play and would be sort
of would have negative attitudes themselves about pretense and would
be discouraging of it in children. Did the results actually

(44:42):
match up with that well, sort of, but with some surprises.
They did find that overall, Mennonite school teachers were not
as supportive of pretend to play as non Mennonite Christian teachers. However,
unlike the New Order and the Non Mennonite Christian team teachers,
several of the Old Order teachers in their study reported

(45:04):
that they actually participated in pretend to play. With the
children at recess that was kind of counterintuitive. They also
found that Old Order Mennonite teachers were also positive about
some types of fantasy, though not all, saying that they
shared their own dreams or daydreams with the children, something

(45:25):
not said by the teachers from the other groups. Also,
Old Order teachers were on the whole, surprisingly positive about
imaginary companions. The authors wrote, quote, it is interesting that
imaginary companions are mentioned in one of the very few
published first hand reports of Mennonite childhood experiences. They cite

(45:47):
a book by Weaver in nineteen eighty three which quote
described how as a child she invented an imaginary companion
who was unlike herself, able to wear fancy clothes and
wear her hair and curls now. Despite that example in
this other book, the authors stressed that in their direct
observations in the study, there were no reports of imaginary

(46:08):
companions allowing a vicarious way around social restrictions. Instead, they
were described as more filling a social void. However, it's
possible that information about I don't know, thrill seeking or
non conforming elements of imaginary companions were being hidden or
filtered out in these reports. I mean to the researchers,

(46:28):
not by the researchers. Another really interesting contrast, specifically with
respect to the imaginary companions, Several of the New Order
and non Mennonite Christian teachers were actually somewhat concerned in
a psychological or spiritual sense about imaginary companions, fearing that

(46:48):
they might be evidence of a psychological problem or literally
of demonic possession.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
Yeah. I mean getting into a scenario where the child
is talking about an imagined entity that's speaking to them
and perhaps sharing knowledge with them that knows more than
they do. Is matching up with little discussed in the
last episode.

Speaker 3 (47:07):
I want to come back to that question here in
a minute, But okay, So that was the first study
looking at the attitudes of teachers. Somewhat lined up. The
Mennonite teachers were, on average not as supportive of playing pretend,
but there were some surprises, more variation than expected. So

(47:34):
let's go to study number two. This again was observing
the play of children at recess and looking for signs
of pretense of pretend play to see if there were
differences between the three faith environments. The main finding was
that Old Order Mennonite children showed differences in pretend play,
but not deficits. So it was not that they didn't

(47:56):
play pretend, but what they pretended was notably different. The
content was different, and they found that old order Mennonite
children tended to pretend with more realistic themes about work
and adult roles within their community. There was less fantasy,
less separation of the play themes from the working order

(48:18):
of reality. And the authors note that this is in
line with previous findings that when you say ask children
to draw pictures, and you compare the drawings of Amish
school children with non Amish children, Amish kids drawings were
much more concerned with realistic daily activities like raking leaves
or taking care of babies, whereas the non Amish children,

(48:41):
by comparison, engaged in a lot more fantasy ideation in
their drawings. Now why this difference, Well, for one thing,
this does seem to be exactly the kind of thinking
that the more strict Mennonite communities encourage. Mennonite adults on
average are more supportive of preteens and play when it

(49:02):
concerns the children's own intended future lives. So like I
am pretending to be a father or a mother, I
am pretending to be a farmer and so forth. Also,
Old Order Minnite children, the authors point out, have limited
exposure to fantasy themes through culture. These children generally do
not watch movies or TV. They usually don't read books

(49:25):
with fantasy themes. So it could be that they are
simply given much less external inspiration to entertain non realistic
ideas and scenarios. I don't know how much of a
role that plays, but that does seem significant now.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
I mean, I instantly though, wonder about the Bible's.

Speaker 3 (49:43):
Role, and I had the same question.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
Yeah, the Bible is full of magic and giants and
dragons and any number of fantastic themes.

Speaker 3 (49:52):
I want to ask a question at the end, and
that it'll bring us back to that as well.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (49:57):
Another interesting observation that the authors make here is that
even though the Old Order Mennite children did play pretend,
they certainly did, they sometimes appeared to lack the vocabulary
to properly discuss the idea of pretend play. And here
I want to read from a passage the author's write quote.
For example, an Old Order Mennonite first grader in our

(50:20):
study did not know the word pretend when he came
across it in a story about a bird who feigned
death to deceive a predator. So to be clear, this
is not even a story about playing. This is a
story about nature, but it just involves the idea of pretending,
as in like feigning something.

Speaker 2 (50:39):
Yeah, this lines up with some of the study limitations
that were discussing. That meta analysis that I discussed in
the last episode is that sometimes talking to the children
is the best source. But also, on one hand, they
just might not have they might not have the linguistic
ability to really discuss everything, to really couch it in
terms that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (50:59):
Right, So this is a child who comes across the
idea of pretending in a story about nature and doesn't
know what the word means. I want to stress however, though,
that does not mean that the child did not pretend.
You can do something without having the words to describe
what you're doing. The authors continue quote. On another occasion,
the first author noted the comments of an old order

(51:22):
girl who was observing another girl dress a doll. She
kept repeating, in a dismissive tone, it's not a right baby.
We questioned her and learned that she was trying to
express that the doll was not a real baby.

Speaker 2 (51:38):
Oh, how I wish we called baby dolls wrong babies.
That was so great.

Speaker 3 (51:42):
I don't want to do this in my house because
it has bad normative implications. But yeah, that would be
hilarious to call everything pretend wrong. This is wrong dinosaur,
this is wrong food.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
But that's fascinating. It's so easy to take the concept
of for granted, even with children, that it would just
be a concept that you would latch onto so early.
But yeah, not necessarily. You might not have the word
for it, even if the concept is still clearly there
in their mind. But how do you refer to it?

Speaker 3 (52:15):
Another possible explanation for these findings, similar to the last one,
is the idea that Old Order Mennonite children had comparatively
fewer what the authors call environmental triggers for fantasy based
pretend to play than New Order Mennonites or non Mennonite Christians.
And you could think of a lot of these triggers.
Sometimes I think we might forget to acknowledge how many

(52:39):
things and things in the world were surrounded by that
just cause us to imagine. So examples could be like
toys and costumes, other play props, decorations. Classroom decorations with
fantasy themes. You might not think about those, but they
talked about, you know, like a poster up on the
classroom wall that has the Easter Bunny on it, or

(52:59):
you know, oh, that actually is a kind of fantasy theme.
They even cite elaborate playground equipment, which the old Order
mid Night Children did not have, and the author I
didn't know this, but the authors cite previous research that
had found that more elaborate playground equipment, as opposed to
simpler traditional playground equipment, has been found to quote promote

(53:22):
socio dramatic play themes. So I think the idea might
be that you know, these more complex kind of I
don't know what even the terms for these things are now,
but like these kind of towers and stuff that children
climb on and have a good time on might promote
a more dramatic, collaborative, fictional way of playing, if that
makes any sense.

Speaker 2 (53:42):
No, No, I can see that. Spent enough time on
playgrounds that I think I can see it. You know,
It's like, even if it's certainly you have playgrounds where
the equipment is taking the form of a ship, where
it's taking the form of Oh, I guess generally a castle.
But even if there's nothing that thick, you have like
a dynamic system built out there, like the drama kind

(54:04):
of rights itself, you know, like you know, differing heights
involve narrowing spaces, bridges and so forth.

Speaker 3 (54:12):
Yeah, exactly. So I didn't know this, but it makes
sense to me as well. I can see that being true. Okay,
So one more explanation the authors offer that is community orientation.
So Old Order Mennonites tend to be very focused on
communal harmony and take a somewhat negative view of individualism.

(54:36):
And interestingly, I don't think I would have put this together,
but this really caught me here. Previous research has found
that pretend play with realistic themes may help foster communal
play between children because the script and the roles are

(54:56):
more likely to be familiar to all the children. So
I don't think that would have occurred to me naturally,
but it's true. Like if we're kids out on the
playground and we're playing I don't know, playing games that
I used to play, which are like, let's act out
the latest movie that I saw and obsessed with. So
we're playing Santo versus the Martian invasion. Only the children

(55:17):
who have seen the movie or are already familiar with
the characters in the game will easily be able to participate.
Kids who are not familiar with what's going on are
really going to be at a loss here. But if
we all come from farming families and we all play
Farmer or we play house, every child is going to

(55:37):
have some kind of relevant experience and know roughly how
to play the game. So the idea is realistic. Pretend
play is more accessible to more children, more easily, and
the author's right. In contrast, children who have a more
individualistic orientation are more likely to pursue more imaginative themes,

(55:58):
which require negotiation and often result in conflict among play partners.
And I know, you know, we're partisans of imaginative play
and fantasy themes and all that, so we're not down
talking it. But I can absolutely see this being true.
Do you see this, Rob, Yeah?

Speaker 2 (56:14):
Yeah, I mean there are I guess a few different
ways to think about it. On one hand, there's the
the You can easily imagine one child having to explain,
you know, their obsession the game they want to play
based on some sort of curated fandom that these other
kids don't have, which I feel like is more common
these days, you know, with kids who you know have

(56:36):
grown up on a particular media diet, that might be
a little more niche in some regards. You know, you know,
one kid wants to play Thunder of the Barbarian. No
other kids are watching Thunder of the Barbarian anymore, but
you know their parent insisted on handing this nineteen eighties
Hanna Barbara cartoon onto them, and that means they have
to maybe have a frustrating job of explaining like, no,

(56:58):
it's not a lightsaber, Thundar has a different type of
light sun sort or whatever it was.

Speaker 3 (57:04):
Kids could be mean about this, Yeah, yeah, you don't know.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
But then on the other hand, like thinking about what
are the differences between playing Star Wars and playing House
or Farm? Like House or Farm don't really have conflict
or factions. It's everyone, like you've been saying, it's communal,
everyone's working together, whereas Star Wars is all about the factions. Well,
like are you gonna be? You know, the good guys
are the bad guys? What are you? What's your lightsaber like?

(57:29):
And who gets to win? And so I can imagine
a scenario where that leads to more conflict.

Speaker 3 (57:34):
Just to set the record straight, I think farm can
have all kinds of conflicts. Oh well, but how many
the kids under how many?

Speaker 2 (57:42):
Yeah, how many of those stories have they they actually
engaged with? But in the Star Wars scenario, though, I
will say that eventually a grown up may interfere and say,
you're all Jedi, and you're all fighting invisible droids, stop
hitting each other with sticks. That's what I did.

Speaker 3 (58:00):
Yeah, But in that frame of mind. The authors go
on to invoke the variable emphasis on collective social well
being versus individualistic expression in different cultures and subcultures, noting
that in general, if a culture or subculture places more
value on social harmony and the avoidance of conflict, this

(58:23):
could lead to a d emphasis on fantasy themes and
pretend to play and a greater preference for realistic themes
for the reason we just discussed. Not that it's always
going to work out that way, but that's one thing
that could be operative in making these distinctions. Now, there's
a final question I want to come back to that
we've sort of touched on a couple of times already,

(58:43):
and this is something that comes up in the cross
cultural section of that paper by Weisberg I mentioned, and
this is the question of how should we think about
pretend or imaginative play in a cultural context where adults
and authority figures do not agree that the pretend elements
are only pretend. So as a background, you know, we

(59:07):
talked in part one about the question of can children
really tell the difference between pretend and reality? This concern
parents might have and even some you know, some researchers
have had this concern, or I think that page was
concerned sometimes that children couldn't tell the difference between fantasy
and reality, didn't know whether you know that the pretend
game was really real or not. By and large, it

(59:30):
seems like the research says mostly children can tell the difference.
They make a few more errors along these lines than
adults do, but generally they know what's real and what isn't.
But that kind of question seems a lot more cut
and dry when everybody, including like all the parents and
adults will all agree that yeah, okay, so you're playing dinosaur,

(59:52):
but you're not really a dinosaur right now, or yes,
it's great that you have an imaginary companion and you
play with them, that we're not being to discouraging of
that at all. But there's not like literally actually another
person here, and the child actually knows that the adults agree.
But in the case of imaginary friends, there are some

(01:00:13):
cultural contexts in which the adults might say, no, wait
a minute, there may really be a being. There two
versions of this, one positive and one with negative connotation.
Starting it with the negative one, we've already mentioned research
documenting how some Christian parents and teachers have regarded imaginary
friends and companions as dangerous, not just because they are

(01:00:35):
an unwelcome fantasy, but maybe because of the religious beliefs
of the adults. They think this imaginary friend might be
a demon. So the adult says the imaginary friend. So
maybe the child thinks the imaginary friend is just pretend,
but the adult says, no, the imaginary friend is real
and is dangerous.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
Yeah, yeah, no, Obviously you can imagine that the opos
scenario as well, where it's thought of as an angel
or more some sort of just you know, other harmless
sort of like I don't know, Victorian notion of a fairy.

Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
Yes, in fact, I had an example of that. So
the author here also mentioned studies documenting and I think
you actually mentioned this in your section on imaginary companions
in part two, But it's been documented in some East
Indian households that children's imaginary friends or pretend to play
are sometimes thought to be interactions with other worldly beings

(01:01:33):
generally benign. It is generally not thought of as like
this is a demon that's dangerous, but like a benign
positive entity or memory from a past life. So in
this case, the adult may say the imaginary friend could
be real, but that's fine. I feel like these kinds
of situations really complicate the question of looking into do

(01:01:53):
children know what is real versus what is pretend because
surely their frame of reference for that has to be
taken largely from the cues given by the adults around them, Right.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
Yeah, this is this is a fascinating area to sort
of like dip our toes into, like where you have
one hand, childhood understanding of the unseen world and creation
of the unseen world, and then adult and larger cultural
concepts of the unseen world. What happens when these two meet?
Where do they coalesce? Where did they Where are they

(01:02:29):
at odds with each other? You know? And it's I mean,
it's a it's a it's a weird area because a
lot of what is going on there's like one idea
of adulthood is that you and parenthood is that you
are telling children what is real. You're preparing them for
the real world, the mundane world, the physical world, and

(01:02:50):
often in very broad strokes, you know, when they're young,
the idea of like, I want to keep you from dying.
I need to keep you safe. But then you begin
to if you begin doing introduce these other concepts of
an unseen world of spiritual entities and deities like you know,
that that adds this entirely other complex layer. Like one.
One example that comes to mind is the idea of

(01:03:12):
you know, of children saying, you know, talking about prayer
to God and speaking to God, and when the idea
is eventually introduced that God will speak back, you know what.
And depending on what kind of emphasis is put on that,
and how that is explained or not explained to a
child like that can create all sorts of of questions,
you know, like well, why am I not hearing a

(01:03:32):
voice back? Or what if I do hear a voice back?
And then how does that get folded? Up into everything.

Speaker 3 (01:03:38):
Yeah, I think this really ties into a question. Actually,
this I think is probably going to be a major
thing I want to talk about in the next part.
If you're willing, Robbie willing to go to another part, un.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
Particularly with me. Yeah, I think so. We're already getting
some great feedback from listeners, so I think we should
definitely move.

Speaker 3 (01:03:53):
Forward, absolutely, keep it coming. Contact at Stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. But anyway, I was going to say,
it's the question of what, if anything, do children learn
about the real world from engaging with pretend scenarios. But yeah,
more to come in part four and who knows what
lies beyond. But I think that does it for today.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
I think, so we'll go ahead and close it out here.
But yeah, again, we'd love to hear from everyone out there,
just to remind it that Stuff to Go to Your
Mind is primarily a signed some culture podcast with core
episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we run a
short form episode. The one last week was had to
do with something from Stephen King's Children of the Corn.
I think that was largely an accident that if we'd

(01:04:34):
covered the Children of the Corn and imaginary friends and
so forth in such close proximity to one another, and
then on Fridays we just set aside time to just
talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (01:04:46):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other to send
us your thoughts about childhood, pretend to play paracosms, and
any of the rest, you can email us at contact
at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:05:11):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.

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