January 9, 2012 • 30 mins
Are imaginary playthings friends or foes for child development? Psychologists have studied imaginary friends since the 1800s, and they've come to some fascinating conclusions. Tune in to learn more about imaginary friends.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told you?
From house stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline and Caroline. You know,
(00:20):
one thing that I love about doing this podcast with
you is the fact that it gives us an excuse
to research things that just pique our interest at random.
For instance, we are in charge, yes, we are in
charge of this podcast. And um, we decided to talk
(00:41):
about imaginary friends today, not because of the subversive gender
politics of children's fantasy play, but really just because imaginary
friends came up in some of our research dealing with
only children, right, which we talked about recently. Because they're
not long, they're not lonely, just creative, they're well adjusted. Uh.
(01:04):
And it got me thinking about imaginary friends and where
they came from. And I thought that maybe listeners would
enjoy hearing about some scholarship on imaginary friends because similar
to the only child that well, the similar to the
only children's stereotypes as being you know, lonely introverts, kids
with imaginary friends also have some stereotypes as well. As
(01:28):
either being geniuses or kind of dim. Yeah, kind of
kind of strange, strange and misfitty. Um. We read this
meta study from two thousand six by s. Ben Clawson
and Richard Passman on the history not only the history
of uh imaginary friends, but the history of the study
(01:48):
of imaginary friends. Because um, as we've talked about before, Um,
the the idea of childhood didn't really come about until
more recently, and so they sort of looked at the
past studies on on children and on imaginary friends and everything,
and it's really changed over the centuries because not everybody
really used to care so much about kids. They were
(02:11):
like whatever, they're just small people, right. The actual concept
of childhood as its own distinct life phase emerged after
the seventeenth century and then um, but it wasn't even
until around the nineteenth century that it was thought up
a thought of as a crucial time of growth and
development that they should actually pay attention to. Because really, um,
(02:34):
in that time, kids were just seen as small workers
with little hands, little hands that can get into those
machines or real they fixed things. Um. Yeah, it's interesting
because yeah, the twentieth century, that's when we really start
to see children being viewed as these people, these small
people who have special needs and desires and need to
(02:54):
play and really have their imagination set loose. And that's
when we get these recorded instances of pretend companions or
imaginary friends or whatever you call them. Different researchers have
different names for them. But um, it's interesting because it
seems like these imaginary friends didn't really emerge until kids
(03:14):
did have set aside playtime and they were on their
own and they're playing with their toys by themselves, and
all of a sudden, they have imaginary friends. And and
there are different views of them of like whether it's
just the kid's imagination they're just playing, or whether it's
an actual spirit that's inhabiting the child or there's some
demon following them around. And um, one study of imaginary
(03:39):
friends in India Northern India, I thought was very interesting.
So in northern India there there are very few recorded
instances and no recognition of pretend companions. But this is
a culture where children have less playtime and little time
to be left alone, and those are conditions that could
reflect the era before childhood was really recognized as an
(04:01):
important period for play and exploration and speaking of UM
of India. Classon and Passman also note that UM A
lot of times pretend companions. When uh, those instances do
come up, it's usually perceived as uh, someone like a
spirit from a previous life coming to visit the child's
(04:22):
kind of scene, as a in a in a positive light,
whereas in the book by Peter and Sue Vanderhook and
Neil Anderson called Spiritual Protection for Your Children, Uh, pretend
companions or imaginary friends are described as proternatural powers that
can quote result in spiritual bondage. Right. So it's sort
(04:45):
of like, uh, there's this. You know, certain certain people
are worried that the devil is inhabiting their children, or
that the devil is in their room. And I went
on Amazon just to kind of check this book out,
and a lot of people had a lot of readers
had written reviews of it. And one person said, you know,
I was so nervous about my child because you know,
(05:05):
he kept saying that there were monsters in his room
or under his bed, and I kept saying, now, you're fine,
you're fine, You're fine. And then I read this book
and I realized that Satan could be in the room
and so there, yeah, there's there's been there and that's
that's a view that's you know, gone back for for
a long time. So it's interesting that so many different
people have different views on imaginary friends. And I think
it's just something you know, we might be uncomfortable with
(05:28):
it because it's totally unfamiliar if you can't see this,
you know, entity that a child is supposedly having conversations
where I worry about your kid a little. Right, some parents,
UM get a little squeamish, but as we will, as
we will learn, they don't really need to be. But
(05:48):
let's back up UM and maybe trace the history of
UM scholarship related to imaginary friends, because there are a
lot of studies dealing with child development and this psychology
around imaginary friends. Right, the first studies on the topic,
UH did start start rolling in the late nineteenth century,
(06:10):
but unfortunately study practice as research practices were not as
uh maybe carefully monitored as they are now, and so
a lot of there there were studies where the common
traits of children's pretend companions were tabulated, but data were
not gathered in any sort of standardized way. So we
have stories of kids who had imaginary friends and and
you know, attributed personalities to objects. But but nothing nothing
(06:34):
that we can really get percentages from, right, And there's
also as a result of a wide range of analysis
regarding imaginary friends. For instance, um and early psychologist Lewis
Terman thought that um, imaginary friends were common among gifted children.
It was a good thing. Yeah, But then we have
sociologists Charles Cooley, who was a turn of the century
(06:57):
academic who thought that imaginary friends were evidence of the
need for socializing. Right, so yeah, coolie was saying, like,
clearly humans need to socialize, even if it is with
an imaginary entity. And how sad for you, but it's
not a real person. Um And and let's let's we
can't leave out we can't talk about children in psychology
without mentioning g Stanley Hall, Grandvill Grandville Stanley Hall. It's
(07:20):
kind of a jerky hurt my feelings. And that Only
Child podcast for saying that I'm a misfit. Yeah, he
had a disease. Was the developmental psychologist responsible really for
starting the whole lonely only child stereotype, And not surprisingly
he was not a big fan of imaginary friends. No,
he considered pretend companions in terms of the child's withdrawal
(07:41):
of attention from outside stimuli to focus instead on the
internal processes that maintain the personality of this pretend being.
So the child was, you know, wasting time. They're not
focusing on fun things like playing outside. There they've turned
all of their attention inward and you you probably should
fix that. Uh. And then there is the idea, um
(08:01):
that pretend companions are a way of children negotiating between
reality and fantasy. And this was put forth at the
turn of the the century, um by Naomi Nor's Worthy in
Theodore Theodora Whitley um. And they said, quote, it's usually
a lonely child. There it goes again, a lonely child
that developed these play companions, and they'll become more real
(08:24):
to him than his living playmates. There's a little air
of like stranger danger, and that where the imaginary friend, right. Yeah.
And they they used these imaginary friends as an example
of how children might not be able to differentiate really
between reality and pretense the way adults can. You know,
they use this as evidence of like, well, obviously adults
are mature, we've had life experience, we've learned a lot
(08:46):
um we know when something is fake and pretend or
whether it's real, And they just assume that children couldn't
And they say that this whole practice of developing a
an imaginary friend results in losing all of the quote
given take that comes with living children. So they're worried
about kids who have imaginary friends, especially if the imaginary
companion is at the expense of having real, live, warm
(09:09):
blooded friends. But a lot of those early theories are
so contradictory because on the one hand, they see imaginary
friends as a sign that a child is you know,
needs more socialization with actual children, but having the imaginary
friend will only impede them from ever being able to
socialize with kids, because they'll only be able to talk
(09:30):
to the you know tiger, the imaginary tiger standing next
to them. I know, you just can't get rid of
that imaginary tiger. Nuffle up against that. It's been following
me around for years. Um. One idea that's persisted into
modern research is from Gene PG who regarded conversations children's
conversations with pretend companions as retaining vestiges of self talk.
(09:52):
So the kid is moving from you know, just talking
to him or herself in in sort of a play way,
and like using nonsense words to developing a narrative and
being able to converse and actually speaking socially and so
having conversations with other people. So so he said that
it's it's more of a development process and similar to
(10:16):
UH that idea of imaginary friends is a way to
negotiate between fantasy and reality. UM. Other child psychologists have
thought that children would use pretend companions to cope with
internal and external demands, kind of how they early ways
to negotiate with their own psychological development. A lot of
times you'll you'll see UM imaginary companions termed as coping
(10:42):
mechanisms for kids. Right in the nineteen thirties, UM research
really starts to shift away from theory to actual empiricism,
and Margaret Spenson's seminal nineteen thirty four study is one
that gets talked about a lot with child psychology and
imaginary friends. She basically established an operational definition that we
(11:05):
think of today when we talk about imaginary friends. And
she looked at a group of forty Chicago school children
and found that imaginary companions appeared at the median age
of two years fifteen months, and we're three times as
often appearing to girls then boys, which okay, these things
(11:26):
sound normal and non offensive. But then she said in
her in the abstract that I read about her study,
says that personality difficulties were present and most of the
children timidity being most common. You know, people, why you
gotta be a hater. So basically, Margaret Svenson is the
g Stanley Hall of the the imaginary friend. I don't
(11:49):
know if she's so hostile, she's not quite as to pick.
I know, once you hurt my feelings, it's hard to
come back from that. And Sinson is also responsive bowl
for establishing kind of the go to definition of what
an imaginary companion is. And we should note that she
did not wouldn't categorize something like an anthropomorphized stuffed animal, um,
(12:13):
like a our, an actual object that kids might endow
with human personalities. Um. But this is her, This is
her go to for imaginary friends. She says that they
are an invisible character named and referred to in conversations
with other people or played with directly for a period
of time at least several months, having an air of
reality for the child, but no apparent objective basis and um,
(12:39):
and it's still kind of you know, the benchmark. Yeah. Well,
I think what's interesting also is that there's just this
giant lull where nobody really cares about children's imaginary friends
anymore as far as research goes, because Sencon was publishing
in the thirties and then major interest in research in
this topic didn't re emerge until the eighties. And some
(13:02):
of the stuff I read was saying, you know that
maybe that has something to do with what researchers were
actually interested in as far as how children's minds worked
and how children fit into our society and everything. Um.
And now a lot of times imaginary friends are seen
as a vivid merging point between fantasy and reality. That
(13:22):
it's not a bad thing that these kids are have
such vivid imaginations and can you see these characters? Um,
But that it's actually it's a good thing, and that
they're actually good benefits, good benefits. It's incredibly redundant, there
are benefits of having imaginary friends, right, And according to
(13:44):
depending on what study you read, I'll just say a
lot of kids have imaginary friends. Um. Some some articles
I read said it was sixty percent. Some have said half.
But you have to also take into account what are
they counting as an imaginary friend? And are they counting
you know, your blankie or your stuff tiger that you
put a personality on as a personified object or are
(14:06):
they just counting the imaginary guy that's over in the
corner right I was. I was reading all of this
stuff on imaginary friends. I was going into it thinking, well,
I never had an imaginary friend. I didn't have hobbs um.
But I did realize though, that my puffle lump named Ducky,
(14:27):
who was one of my best friends. I took her everywhere. Um.
She she kind of fit all of the criteria as
an imaginary companion. We spent a lot of time together.
What kind of personality did she have? She rocked? She
was really easy going, like to have a good time.
And I also would give her flying powder so that
(14:51):
she could fly around. Was that kool aid? Umassi sticks?
It magical? It was lipped an iced tea. Actually was
not expecting that. I know we're your parents mad that
you were taking the iced tea. No, no, I think
I've probably snuck it. So I'd give Ducky this a
little sip of tea, and by ducky, I do mean
I would drink it myself because I loved tea, and
(15:13):
and we would go on flying adventures so fun. No,
my blankie did not take me on any flying adventures.
I I went into this, into this thinking the same thing.
I was like, I didn't have an imagine a friend. Actually,
I remember being in my parents room watching TV and
thinking like, wow, kids my age, I feel like it's
really calm because I I obviously talked like that when
(15:33):
that was however old. You know, kids today really seem
to think these imaginary friends are pretty cool. I'm imagining
a little Caroline maring a monocle holding up a bubble pipe. Um.
I was like, you know, I'm kind of bored, boredom
child alone, you know, left alone watching TV and I'm
an only child, you know whatever, seeking stimulation. I'm like,
(15:56):
let's see what this is all about. So I remember
hopping down off the bed and getting on the floor,
off legged, and and looking into the blank space across
from me and being like, okay, let's go come on, imagination.
No one is here, and this is I'm gonna watch Nickelodeons.
Make me a friend. Brain. But I did, but I
did have a blankie that I that that had quite
(16:17):
a nurturing and maternal um personality. So what does what
does that kind of fantasy play that we engaged in
like so many other children, mean, Caroline, Well, it just
could it could be anything. I mean, it could really
I mean not to not to totally cop out here,
(16:37):
but it could just be a child playing. It could
be a coping mechanism. Like you said, Um, it's just
it's not uncommon. Really, it's normal. It is normal, and Um.
The stereotype that imaginary friends are linked to shyness or
maladjustment has been pretty thoroughly debunked. UM The I eighteen ninety,
(17:00):
a little bit dated but stills book called The House
of Make Believe by Dorothy G. Singer from Yale and
Jerome Singer, who is now a Professor emeritus of psychology,
UM said that kids who are choosing to create imaginary
friends tend to be more sociable and have more friends
than the only children, and it might possibly be because
(17:22):
they have better communication skills. Certain research suggests could be
because they've spent all that time talking in a thin
air and and they've had to come up with both
sides of the conversation. So they're they're used to maybe
thinking of possibly what the other person would be thinking.
You know, because not all um imaginary friends are Ducky
(17:43):
or Blankie, you know, they're some of them. Kids actually
argue with their imaginary friends. Yeah, there was. I was
reading in Marjorie Taylor's book Imaginary Companions and the Children
Who Create Them, which is fascinating, if only for the
interviews with kids about their imaginary companions and the I
mean the elaborate descriptions these six and seven year old
(18:05):
children will offer to researchers is incredible. One of my favorites,
of which UM was a girl who was really into dolphins.
She loved dolphins, and so her parents gave her a
stuffed dolphin, and um she named the dolphin Dipper. But
if you ask her to describe Dipper, she would tell
(18:26):
you that he was the size of a door and
covered in sparkles and stripes, and lived on a star
just as any Lisa frank Ranther would and lived in
a trapper keeper. But it was great. There was a
There was also Cucumber Boy. Yeah, Cucumber Boy was offered
up as an example in this breakdown of who has
(18:48):
what type of imaginary friend, and according to research by
Gabriel Trianfi and Elaine Reese Um, imaginary companion play, like
we said, is more common in first point born children
and in girls, boys are more likely to impersonate a character,
which is interesting. But their breakdown, UH, of kids they
(19:12):
studied had one imaginary companion, had too, and a very
large chunk had three or more imaginary friends. And I
really like the breakdown of what those friends were. Half
of the companions, a full half were identified as people
some type of person hanging out another kid or whatever.
Fourteen percent were identified as animals. Twenty five percent were
(19:36):
identified as fantasy beings such as cucumber boy. And there
is no more details. Yeah, that was the only there's
no explanation, just like cucumber boy, just like cucumber And
I'm like, well, of course, cucumber boy. I what I
need something more than that. I need a chapter on
cucumber boy. And then eleven percent the identity was unclear
of the imaginary friend. Marjorie Taylor Uh notes so one
(20:00):
point a case with a child who had an ongoing
and she says, rather stormy relationship with a chest of
drawers in his bedroom. I have never heard of anything
like that. And I mean that's I don't know that
would necessarily be categorized as an imaginary friend, well, but
definitely a personified object much Blankie or Deckie and um.
(20:20):
And she also says, uh that in I think it's
of kids with imaginary friends have said that they will
get angry with their imaginary companions at times and even
have arguments with them. Right. Um. The New York University
Child Study Center tells parents not to worry. Um, if
your kid is has an imaginary friend, it's not nothing
(20:42):
to worry about. And if your kid does not have
an imaginary friend, don't worry. It's not that they're going
to be stupid or not be able to pass their
verbal s a t section, um, but that you should
just let it happen, you know, and embrace that that
fantasy play. Right. So if they are arguing with their dresser,
it's not it's not necessarily that you're being too strict
(21:04):
of a disciplinarian, or they're watching mommy and daddy fight
and so they're fighting with a dresser. It's more just
that your kid is developing. There's this little person, and
they're getting used to the world and they're getting used
to new ideas, and so it's just their way. Like
we said, it's a coping mechanism. So they're learning how
to what you know, what does discipline mean? How do
(21:26):
I interact with other things? Furniture? It seems like for
for parents at least what Marjorie Taylor writes about her
own experience with her daughter who would have imaginary friends.
She said, the hardest thing about it was sometimes if
if they kind of can't turn turn the imaginary friend off,
especially if they She's saying that she went to a
(21:48):
dinner party or something and her daughter saw a dog
at the person's house and immediately just became a dog
for the night and that was it. And we if
she would ask her, you know, like, are you done
with your dinner? Like she just she would not respond
in in in people people speak, I'd rather just have
a dog. Um. Well, it could depend on your birth order, yes, Um.
(22:13):
Birth order and imaginary companion status both both uniquely predicted
children's narrative skill later in life. So it's interesting. I mean,
I'm kind of switching gears here. It's interesting because you know,
we've talked about only children and firstborns, how they're perfectionists.
There's a lot of pressure on them, both internally and
from their parents to really perform well. But these kids
(22:35):
who are talking to imaginary friends have been practicing their
narrative skills and you know, figuring out what this imaginary
other person is thinking. Um, so that's a good predictive
of narrative skills. But so is birth order. And like
I've said, firstborns didn't have more imaginary friends than other
people other kids, So that's that's a good sign for
(22:57):
your s A T scores And it's interesting because tire
it's actually both of these are higher for kids whose
mothers knew about the the imaginary friend, because they're assuming
that if the mother knows about the friend. This isn't
a study from New Zealand. Um that it means that
there's been some interaction that the kid has told the
mother about the imaginary friends, so there's been some conversation
(23:18):
about it, whereas kids whose imaginary friends were kept hidden,
maybe there wasn't any conversation about what is this person thinking.
Because if you have an imaginary thing that the parent
doesn't know about, it has to be completely explained. So
this kid has to come up with an entire narrative
and personality on their own. Dippie the dolphin that lives
on a star on a star incredible. Um. Well, in
regard to status and imaginary friends, there was one notable
(23:43):
gender difference, and this is coming out of the research
from Gabriel Trione Fee and Elaine Reef. And apparently girls
tend to create imaginary friends of lower of a lower status.
A lot of times they'll be slower, or they'll be
kind of dumpy um and and the girls will sometimes
(24:03):
pick on on their lower status imaginary friends or to
use them, uh to kind of get away with things
like oh sorry, I you know, I'm late for breakfast
because Trudy couldn't get her shoes on fast enough. Whereas
boys tend to create imaginary friends of equal status kind
of they like to have someone to pal around with more, okay,
(24:25):
but boys are less likely to create imaginary friends. So
I don't I don't know what what does it all mean?
Why are we Why are we creating people to pick on?
Are we practicing for high school? What's going on? Well?
In two thousand five, uh Slate published an article kind
of looking at all of these different studies on imaginary friends,
(24:46):
because it really has been analyzed up down, sideways and diagonal,
and the writer suggests that, hey, you know what, maybe
maybe they're just playing yeah, And that's Slate article also
mentions your friend Marjorie Taylor, who's two thousand five study
(25:06):
with Stephanie Carlson found that kids are slightly more likely
to have imaginary friends later. So whereas earlier we talked
about a study uh Spenson study that found imaginary friends
came out around two years fifteen months, this one says
that of six and seven year old say they have
imaginary companions compared with twenty eight percent of preschoolers. And
(25:29):
it makes sense that, you know, six and seven year
olds would be most common among that age group, because
that's really when you know, I'm starting to go to school,
You're really starting to form your Yeah, there's a lot
of new stuff coming your way, and it probably would
help to have a friend or a ducky or a
blankie or barbies. I was all about barbies, and I
(25:50):
you know, I kind of have to be like, all right, look,
I had a pretty good verbal score on my s
A T I've played barbies all the time, and I
was creating a narrative. I had the horsh for goodness sakes,
So I mean I was creating all sorts of storylines
with Ken take a long romantic drives down the wood
and in their their wind up jeep be it pink
(26:12):
or red. So the original question that I had in
my head when we were going over the only Children
research and I started thinking about only friends or imaginary friends,
was where do they come from? And the answer is
they just come from kids brains and it's a normal
and healthy part of child development that has been scrutinized
now for or century, which is incredible. But if you
(26:37):
you know, if your child has an imaginary friend, or
if you had an imaginary friend, it's it's a good thing.
It sounds like now if you still have an imaginary friend,
that could be that could be some sort of psychotic
break with reality. That would be probably a pretty intense
kind of coping mechanism, right, And if you, if you do,
please tell us we can hear about it. Yeah, I
would love to hear from people who have the just
(26:59):
toetill imaginary friend, like no, not a personified object um
and the real stories. Let us know about your imaginary friends.
I can't wait to hear about all of them. And
if you anyone out there had a cucumber boy, oh
my god, I want to know what it is. Is
it the Veggie Tales thing? Do you think or do
you think this kid came up with cucumber point. He's like,
(27:20):
he saw his mom chopping a cucumber and he's like,
I mean the yeah. Just the interviews with children about
their imaginary friends are so are so incredible that it
could be just someone, you know, picking up a cucumber boy. Yeah,
So let us know mom stuff and how stuff works.
Dot com is the place to write. Meantime, we've got
(27:45):
a couple of emails to read. This is from Elizabeth
in regard to our sex said to Parter, and she writes,
I had a strict Christian upbringing, including a private Christian school,
sex said did not exist for me at all. She says,
one thing I would like to discuss are that chastity contracts.
Simply put, I hate them in my experience. Christianity definitely
(28:05):
stamps any sexual related activity before marriage as bad. We
are told to flee al temptation and avoid anything that
could potentially bring us bring this bad thing into our lives.
It could have been rather easy for me to sign
a contract to remain chase when I was thirteen years old,
because while I very much liked boys, I didn't know
(28:25):
what chastity included, or that sex at the right age
and with the right person could actually be a great thing.
I guess I find these contracts to be so damaging
because if anyone who has signed one does engage in sex,
the shame that comes with breaking that contract could psychologically
sour their sex lives and sexual identity for a very
long time. So that's a that's an interesting take on
(28:48):
sex and the church. Okay, this is an email from
Jenny who she says, I'm currently eighteen and live in Canada.
My last sex side classes when I was sixteen Grade eleven,
I would say in the majority of public schools in
Canada were taught comprehensive sex education. I found our sex
said class pretty helpful because I've never been that comfortable
(29:09):
discussing sex with my parents. Our class has provided a
lot of information about contraceptives, which is great information to
have because I am so much more aware of my
options now. Unfortunately, I would say, the one class in
which we discussed abstinence wasn't particularly effective. No one really
took the class seriously, and I personally found the woman
who taught the class to be fearmongering. I feel like
(29:31):
abstinence classes need to be taught in a more positive
way instead of simply pushing all the terrible things that
can occur from sex. Good point, Jenny, excellent point, and again.
If you want to send us an email, Mom Stuff
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(29:53):
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told you?
From house stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline and Caroline. You know,
(00:20):
one thing that I love about doing this podcast with
you is the fact that it gives us an excuse
to research things that just pique our interest at random.
For instance, we are in charge, yes, we are in
charge of this podcast. And um, we decided to talk
(00:41):
about imaginary friends today, not because of the subversive gender
politics of children's fantasy play, but really just because imaginary
friends came up in some of our research dealing with
only children, right, which we talked about recently. Because they're
not long, they're not lonely, just creative, they're well adjusted. Uh.
(01:04):
And it got me thinking about imaginary friends and where
they came from. And I thought that maybe listeners would
enjoy hearing about some scholarship on imaginary friends because similar
to the only child that well, the similar to the
only children's stereotypes as being you know, lonely introverts, kids
with imaginary friends also have some stereotypes as well. As
(01:28):
either being geniuses or kind of dim. Yeah, kind of
kind of strange, strange and misfitty. Um. We read this
meta study from two thousand six by s. Ben Clawson
and Richard Passman on the history not only the history
of uh imaginary friends, but the history of the study
(01:48):
of imaginary friends. Because um, as we've talked about before, Um,
the the idea of childhood didn't really come about until
more recently, and so they sort of looked at the
past studies on on children and on imaginary friends and everything,
and it's really changed over the centuries because not everybody
really used to care so much about kids. They were
(02:11):
like whatever, they're just small people, right. The actual concept
of childhood as its own distinct life phase emerged after
the seventeenth century and then um, but it wasn't even
until around the nineteenth century that it was thought up
a thought of as a crucial time of growth and
development that they should actually pay attention to. Because really, um,
(02:34):
in that time, kids were just seen as small workers
with little hands, little hands that can get into those
machines or real they fixed things. Um. Yeah, it's interesting
because yeah, the twentieth century, that's when we really start
to see children being viewed as these people, these small
people who have special needs and desires and need to
(02:54):
play and really have their imagination set loose. And that's
when we get these recorded instances of pretend companions or
imaginary friends or whatever you call them. Different researchers have
different names for them. But um, it's interesting because it
seems like these imaginary friends didn't really emerge until kids
(03:14):
did have set aside playtime and they were on their
own and they're playing with their toys by themselves, and
all of a sudden, they have imaginary friends. And and
there are different views of them of like whether it's
just the kid's imagination they're just playing, or whether it's
an actual spirit that's inhabiting the child or there's some
demon following them around. And um, one study of imaginary
(03:39):
friends in India Northern India, I thought was very interesting.
So in northern India there there are very few recorded
instances and no recognition of pretend companions. But this is
a culture where children have less playtime and little time
to be left alone, and those are conditions that could
reflect the era before childhood was really recognized as an
(04:01):
important period for play and exploration and speaking of UM
of India. Classon and Passman also note that UM A
lot of times pretend companions. When uh, those instances do
come up, it's usually perceived as uh, someone like a
spirit from a previous life coming to visit the child's
(04:22):
kind of scene, as a in a in a positive light,
whereas in the book by Peter and Sue Vanderhook and
Neil Anderson called Spiritual Protection for Your Children, Uh, pretend
companions or imaginary friends are described as proternatural powers that
can quote result in spiritual bondage. Right. So it's sort
(04:45):
of like, uh, there's this. You know, certain certain people
are worried that the devil is inhabiting their children, or
that the devil is in their room. And I went
on Amazon just to kind of check this book out,
and a lot of people had a lot of readers
had written reviews of it. And one person said, you know,
I was so nervous about my child because you know,
(05:05):
he kept saying that there were monsters in his room
or under his bed, and I kept saying, now, you're fine,
you're fine, You're fine. And then I read this book
and I realized that Satan could be in the room
and so there, yeah, there's there's been there and that's
that's a view that's you know, gone back for for
a long time. So it's interesting that so many different
people have different views on imaginary friends. And I think
it's just something you know, we might be uncomfortable with
(05:28):
it because it's totally unfamiliar if you can't see this,
you know, entity that a child is supposedly having conversations
where I worry about your kid a little. Right, some parents,
UM get a little squeamish, but as we will, as
we will learn, they don't really need to be. But
(05:48):
let's back up UM and maybe trace the history of
UM scholarship related to imaginary friends, because there are a
lot of studies dealing with child development and this psychology
around imaginary friends. Right, the first studies on the topic,
UH did start start rolling in the late nineteenth century,
(06:10):
but unfortunately study practice as research practices were not as
uh maybe carefully monitored as they are now, and so
a lot of there there were studies where the common
traits of children's pretend companions were tabulated, but data were
not gathered in any sort of standardized way. So we
have stories of kids who had imaginary friends and and
you know, attributed personalities to objects. But but nothing nothing
(06:34):
that we can really get percentages from, right, And there's
also as a result of a wide range of analysis
regarding imaginary friends. For instance, um and early psychologist Lewis
Terman thought that um, imaginary friends were common among gifted children.
It was a good thing. Yeah, But then we have
sociologists Charles Cooley, who was a turn of the century
(06:57):
academic who thought that imaginary friends were evidence of the
need for socializing. Right, so yeah, coolie was saying, like,
clearly humans need to socialize, even if it is with
an imaginary entity. And how sad for you, but it's
not a real person. Um And and let's let's we
can't leave out we can't talk about children in psychology
without mentioning g Stanley Hall, Grandvill Grandville Stanley Hall. It's
(07:20):
kind of a jerky hurt my feelings. And that Only
Child podcast for saying that I'm a misfit. Yeah, he
had a disease. Was the developmental psychologist responsible really for
starting the whole lonely only child stereotype, And not surprisingly
he was not a big fan of imaginary friends. No,
he considered pretend companions in terms of the child's withdrawal
(07:41):
of attention from outside stimuli to focus instead on the
internal processes that maintain the personality of this pretend being.
So the child was, you know, wasting time. They're not
focusing on fun things like playing outside. There they've turned
all of their attention inward and you you probably should
fix that. Uh. And then there is the idea, um
(08:01):
that pretend companions are a way of children negotiating between
reality and fantasy. And this was put forth at the
turn of the the century, um by Naomi Nor's Worthy in
Theodore Theodora Whitley um. And they said, quote, it's usually
a lonely child. There it goes again, a lonely child
that developed these play companions, and they'll become more real
(08:24):
to him than his living playmates. There's a little air
of like stranger danger, and that where the imaginary friend, right. Yeah.
And they they used these imaginary friends as an example
of how children might not be able to differentiate really
between reality and pretense the way adults can. You know,
they use this as evidence of like, well, obviously adults
are mature, we've had life experience, we've learned a lot
(08:46):
um we know when something is fake and pretend or
whether it's real, And they just assume that children couldn't
And they say that this whole practice of developing a
an imaginary friend results in losing all of the quote
given take that comes with living children. So they're worried
about kids who have imaginary friends, especially if the imaginary
companion is at the expense of having real, live, warm
(09:09):
blooded friends. But a lot of those early theories are
so contradictory because on the one hand, they see imaginary
friends as a sign that a child is you know,
needs more socialization with actual children, but having the imaginary
friend will only impede them from ever being able to
socialize with kids, because they'll only be able to talk
(09:30):
to the you know tiger, the imaginary tiger standing next
to them. I know, you just can't get rid of
that imaginary tiger. Nuffle up against that. It's been following
me around for years. Um. One idea that's persisted into
modern research is from Gene PG who regarded conversations children's
conversations with pretend companions as retaining vestiges of self talk.
(09:52):
So the kid is moving from you know, just talking
to him or herself in in sort of a play way,
and like using nonsense words to developing a narrative and
being able to converse and actually speaking socially and so
having conversations with other people. So so he said that
it's it's more of a development process and similar to
(10:16):
UH that idea of imaginary friends is a way to
negotiate between fantasy and reality. UM. Other child psychologists have
thought that children would use pretend companions to cope with
internal and external demands, kind of how they early ways
to negotiate with their own psychological development. A lot of
times you'll you'll see UM imaginary companions termed as coping
(10:42):
mechanisms for kids. Right in the nineteen thirties, UM research
really starts to shift away from theory to actual empiricism,
and Margaret Spenson's seminal nineteen thirty four study is one
that gets talked about a lot with child psychology and
imaginary friends. She basically established an operational definition that we
(11:05):
think of today when we talk about imaginary friends. And
she looked at a group of forty Chicago school children
and found that imaginary companions appeared at the median age
of two years fifteen months, and we're three times as
often appearing to girls then boys, which okay, these things
(11:26):
sound normal and non offensive. But then she said in
her in the abstract that I read about her study,
says that personality difficulties were present and most of the
children timidity being most common. You know, people, why you
gotta be a hater. So basically, Margaret Svenson is the
g Stanley Hall of the the imaginary friend. I don't
(11:49):
know if she's so hostile, she's not quite as to pick.
I know, once you hurt my feelings, it's hard to
come back from that. And Sinson is also responsive bowl
for establishing kind of the go to definition of what
an imaginary companion is. And we should note that she
did not wouldn't categorize something like an anthropomorphized stuffed animal, um,
(12:13):
like a our, an actual object that kids might endow
with human personalities. Um. But this is her, This is
her go to for imaginary friends. She says that they
are an invisible character named and referred to in conversations
with other people or played with directly for a period
of time at least several months, having an air of
reality for the child, but no apparent objective basis and um,
(12:39):
and it's still kind of you know, the benchmark. Yeah. Well,
I think what's interesting also is that there's just this
giant lull where nobody really cares about children's imaginary friends
anymore as far as research goes, because Sencon was publishing
in the thirties and then major interest in research in
this topic didn't re emerge until the eighties. And some
(13:02):
of the stuff I read was saying, you know that
maybe that has something to do with what researchers were
actually interested in as far as how children's minds worked
and how children fit into our society and everything. Um.
And now a lot of times imaginary friends are seen
as a vivid merging point between fantasy and reality. That
(13:22):
it's not a bad thing that these kids are have
such vivid imaginations and can you see these characters? Um,
But that it's actually it's a good thing, and that
they're actually good benefits, good benefits. It's incredibly redundant, there
are benefits of having imaginary friends, right, And according to
(13:44):
depending on what study you read, I'll just say a
lot of kids have imaginary friends. Um. Some some articles
I read said it was sixty percent. Some have said half.
But you have to also take into account what are
they counting as an imaginary friend? And are they counting
you know, your blankie or your stuff tiger that you
put a personality on as a personified object or are
(14:06):
they just counting the imaginary guy that's over in the
corner right I was. I was reading all of this
stuff on imaginary friends. I was going into it thinking, well,
I never had an imaginary friend. I didn't have hobbs um.
But I did realize though, that my puffle lump named Ducky,
(14:27):
who was one of my best friends. I took her everywhere. Um.
She she kind of fit all of the criteria as
an imaginary companion. We spent a lot of time together.
What kind of personality did she have? She rocked? She
was really easy going, like to have a good time.
And I also would give her flying powder so that
(14:51):
she could fly around. Was that kool aid? Umassi sticks?
It magical? It was lipped an iced tea. Actually was
not expecting that. I know we're your parents mad that
you were taking the iced tea. No, no, I think
I've probably snuck it. So I'd give Ducky this a
little sip of tea, and by ducky, I do mean
I would drink it myself because I loved tea, and
(15:13):
and we would go on flying adventures so fun. No,
my blankie did not take me on any flying adventures.
I I went into this, into this thinking the same thing.
I was like, I didn't have an imagine a friend. Actually,
I remember being in my parents room watching TV and
thinking like, wow, kids my age, I feel like it's
really calm because I I obviously talked like that when
(15:33):
that was however old. You know, kids today really seem
to think these imaginary friends are pretty cool. I'm imagining
a little Caroline maring a monocle holding up a bubble pipe. Um.
I was like, you know, I'm kind of bored, boredom
child alone, you know, left alone watching TV and I'm
an only child, you know whatever, seeking stimulation. I'm like,
(15:56):
let's see what this is all about. So I remember
hopping down off the bed and getting on the floor,
off legged, and and looking into the blank space across
from me and being like, okay, let's go come on, imagination.
No one is here, and this is I'm gonna watch Nickelodeons.
Make me a friend. Brain. But I did, but I
did have a blankie that I that that had quite
(16:17):
a nurturing and maternal um personality. So what does what
does that kind of fantasy play that we engaged in
like so many other children, mean, Caroline, Well, it just
could it could be anything. I mean, it could really
I mean not to not to totally cop out here,
(16:37):
but it could just be a child playing. It could
be a coping mechanism. Like you said, Um, it's just
it's not uncommon. Really, it's normal. It is normal, and Um.
The stereotype that imaginary friends are linked to shyness or
maladjustment has been pretty thoroughly debunked. UM The I eighteen ninety,
(17:00):
a little bit dated but stills book called The House
of Make Believe by Dorothy G. Singer from Yale and
Jerome Singer, who is now a Professor emeritus of psychology,
UM said that kids who are choosing to create imaginary
friends tend to be more sociable and have more friends
than the only children, and it might possibly be because
(17:22):
they have better communication skills. Certain research suggests could be
because they've spent all that time talking in a thin
air and and they've had to come up with both
sides of the conversation. So they're they're used to maybe
thinking of possibly what the other person would be thinking.
You know, because not all um imaginary friends are Ducky
(17:43):
or Blankie, you know, they're some of them. Kids actually
argue with their imaginary friends. Yeah, there was. I was
reading in Marjorie Taylor's book Imaginary Companions and the Children
Who Create Them, which is fascinating, if only for the
interviews with kids about their imaginary companions and the I
mean the elaborate descriptions these six and seven year old
(18:05):
children will offer to researchers is incredible. One of my favorites,
of which UM was a girl who was really into dolphins.
She loved dolphins, and so her parents gave her a
stuffed dolphin, and um she named the dolphin Dipper. But
if you ask her to describe Dipper, she would tell
(18:26):
you that he was the size of a door and
covered in sparkles and stripes, and lived on a star
just as any Lisa frank Ranther would and lived in
a trapper keeper. But it was great. There was a
There was also Cucumber Boy. Yeah, Cucumber Boy was offered
up as an example in this breakdown of who has
(18:48):
what type of imaginary friend, and according to research by
Gabriel Trianfi and Elaine Reese Um, imaginary companion play, like
we said, is more common in first point born children
and in girls, boys are more likely to impersonate a character,
which is interesting. But their breakdown, UH, of kids they
(19:12):
studied had one imaginary companion, had too, and a very
large chunk had three or more imaginary friends. And I
really like the breakdown of what those friends were. Half
of the companions, a full half were identified as people
some type of person hanging out another kid or whatever.
Fourteen percent were identified as animals. Twenty five percent were
(19:36):
identified as fantasy beings such as cucumber boy. And there
is no more details. Yeah, that was the only there's
no explanation, just like cucumber boy, just like cucumber And
I'm like, well, of course, cucumber boy. I what I
need something more than that. I need a chapter on
cucumber boy. And then eleven percent the identity was unclear
of the imaginary friend. Marjorie Taylor Uh notes so one
(20:00):
point a case with a child who had an ongoing
and she says, rather stormy relationship with a chest of
drawers in his bedroom. I have never heard of anything
like that. And I mean that's I don't know that
would necessarily be categorized as an imaginary friend, well, but
definitely a personified object much Blankie or Deckie and um.
(20:20):
And she also says, uh that in I think it's
of kids with imaginary friends have said that they will
get angry with their imaginary companions at times and even
have arguments with them. Right. Um. The New York University
Child Study Center tells parents not to worry. Um, if
your kid is has an imaginary friend, it's not nothing
(20:42):
to worry about. And if your kid does not have
an imaginary friend, don't worry. It's not that they're going
to be stupid or not be able to pass their
verbal s a t section, um, but that you should
just let it happen, you know, and embrace that that
fantasy play. Right. So if they are arguing with their dresser,
it's not it's not necessarily that you're being too strict
(21:04):
of a disciplinarian, or they're watching mommy and daddy fight
and so they're fighting with a dresser. It's more just
that your kid is developing. There's this little person, and
they're getting used to the world and they're getting used
to new ideas, and so it's just their way. Like
we said, it's a coping mechanism. So they're learning how
to what you know, what does discipline mean? How do
(21:26):
I interact with other things? Furniture? It seems like for
for parents at least what Marjorie Taylor writes about her
own experience with her daughter who would have imaginary friends.
She said, the hardest thing about it was sometimes if
if they kind of can't turn turn the imaginary friend off,
especially if they She's saying that she went to a
(21:48):
dinner party or something and her daughter saw a dog
at the person's house and immediately just became a dog
for the night and that was it. And we if
she would ask her, you know, like, are you done
with your dinner? Like she just she would not respond
in in in people people speak, I'd rather just have
a dog. Um. Well, it could depend on your birth order, yes, Um.
(22:13):
Birth order and imaginary companion status both both uniquely predicted
children's narrative skill later in life. So it's interesting. I mean,
I'm kind of switching gears here. It's interesting because you know,
we've talked about only children and firstborns, how they're perfectionists.
There's a lot of pressure on them, both internally and
from their parents to really perform well. But these kids
(22:35):
who are talking to imaginary friends have been practicing their
narrative skills and you know, figuring out what this imaginary
other person is thinking. Um, so that's a good predictive
of narrative skills. But so is birth order. And like
I've said, firstborns didn't have more imaginary friends than other
people other kids, So that's that's a good sign for
(22:57):
your s A T scores And it's interesting because tire
it's actually both of these are higher for kids whose
mothers knew about the the imaginary friend, because they're assuming
that if the mother knows about the friend. This isn't
a study from New Zealand. Um that it means that
there's been some interaction that the kid has told the
mother about the imaginary friends, so there's been some conversation
(23:18):
about it, whereas kids whose imaginary friends were kept hidden,
maybe there wasn't any conversation about what is this person thinking.
Because if you have an imaginary thing that the parent
doesn't know about, it has to be completely explained. So
this kid has to come up with an entire narrative
and personality on their own. Dippie the dolphin that lives
on a star on a star incredible. Um. Well, in
regard to status and imaginary friends, there was one notable
(23:43):
gender difference, and this is coming out of the research
from Gabriel Trione Fee and Elaine Reef. And apparently girls
tend to create imaginary friends of lower of a lower status.
A lot of times they'll be slower, or they'll be
kind of dumpy um and and the girls will sometimes
(24:03):
pick on on their lower status imaginary friends or to
use them, uh to kind of get away with things
like oh sorry, I you know, I'm late for breakfast
because Trudy couldn't get her shoes on fast enough. Whereas
boys tend to create imaginary friends of equal status kind
of they like to have someone to pal around with more, okay,
(24:25):
but boys are less likely to create imaginary friends. So
I don't I don't know what what does it all mean?
Why are we Why are we creating people to pick on?
Are we practicing for high school? What's going on? Well?
In two thousand five, uh Slate published an article kind
of looking at all of these different studies on imaginary friends,
(24:46):
because it really has been analyzed up down, sideways and diagonal,
and the writer suggests that, hey, you know what, maybe
maybe they're just playing yeah, And that's Slate article also
mentions your friend Marjorie Taylor, who's two thousand five study
(25:06):
with Stephanie Carlson found that kids are slightly more likely
to have imaginary friends later. So whereas earlier we talked
about a study uh Spenson study that found imaginary friends
came out around two years fifteen months, this one says
that of six and seven year old say they have
imaginary companions compared with twenty eight percent of preschoolers. And
(25:29):
it makes sense that, you know, six and seven year
olds would be most common among that age group, because
that's really when you know, I'm starting to go to school,
You're really starting to form your Yeah, there's a lot
of new stuff coming your way, and it probably would
help to have a friend or a ducky or a
blankie or barbies. I was all about barbies, and I
(25:50):
you know, I kind of have to be like, all right, look,
I had a pretty good verbal score on my s
A T I've played barbies all the time, and I
was creating a narrative. I had the horsh for goodness sakes,
So I mean I was creating all sorts of storylines
with Ken take a long romantic drives down the wood
and in their their wind up jeep be it pink
(26:12):
or red. So the original question that I had in
my head when we were going over the only Children
research and I started thinking about only friends or imaginary friends,
was where do they come from? And the answer is
they just come from kids brains and it's a normal
and healthy part of child development that has been scrutinized
now for or century, which is incredible. But if you
(26:37):
you know, if your child has an imaginary friend, or
if you had an imaginary friend, it's it's a good thing.
It sounds like now if you still have an imaginary friend,
that could be that could be some sort of psychotic
break with reality. That would be probably a pretty intense
kind of coping mechanism, right, And if you, if you do,
please tell us we can hear about it. Yeah, I
would love to hear from people who have the just
(26:59):
toetill imaginary friend, like no, not a personified object um
and the real stories. Let us know about your imaginary friends.
I can't wait to hear about all of them. And
if you anyone out there had a cucumber boy, oh
my god, I want to know what it is. Is
it the Veggie Tales thing? Do you think or do
you think this kid came up with cucumber point. He's like,
(27:20):
he saw his mom chopping a cucumber and he's like,
I mean the yeah. Just the interviews with children about
their imaginary friends are so are so incredible that it
could be just someone, you know, picking up a cucumber boy. Yeah,
So let us know mom stuff and how stuff works.
Dot com is the place to write. Meantime, we've got
(27:45):
a couple of emails to read. This is from Elizabeth
in regard to our sex said to Parter, and she writes,
I had a strict Christian upbringing, including a private Christian school,
sex said did not exist for me at all. She says,
one thing I would like to discuss are that chastity contracts.
Simply put, I hate them in my experience. Christianity definitely
(28:05):
stamps any sexual related activity before marriage as bad. We
are told to flee al temptation and avoid anything that
could potentially bring us bring this bad thing into our lives.
It could have been rather easy for me to sign
a contract to remain chase when I was thirteen years old,
because while I very much liked boys, I didn't know
(28:25):
what chastity included, or that sex at the right age
and with the right person could actually be a great thing.
I guess I find these contracts to be so damaging
because if anyone who has signed one does engage in sex,
the shame that comes with breaking that contract could psychologically
sour their sex lives and sexual identity for a very
long time. So that's a that's an interesting take on
(28:48):
sex and the church. Okay, this is an email from
Jenny who she says, I'm currently eighteen and live in Canada.
My last sex side classes when I was sixteen Grade eleven,
I would say in the majority of public schools in
Canada were taught comprehensive sex education. I found our sex
said class pretty helpful because I've never been that comfortable
(29:09):
discussing sex with my parents. Our class has provided a
lot of information about contraceptives, which is great information to
have because I am so much more aware of my
options now. Unfortunately, I would say, the one class in
which we discussed abstinence wasn't particularly effective. No one really
took the class seriously, and I personally found the woman
who taught the class to be fearmongering. I feel like
(29:31):
abstinence classes need to be taught in a more positive
way instead of simply pushing all the terrible things that
can occur from sex. Good point, Jenny, excellent point, and again.
If you want to send us an email, Mom Stuff
at house stuff Works dot com is our email address,
or you can leave a comment over on Facebook, or
give us a shout on Twitter at moms Stuff podcast,
(29:53):
or you can write a common the bogs stuff Mom
Never told You at how stuff works dot com. Be
sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from
the Future. Join how stup Work staff as we explore
the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The house
(30:14):
step Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today
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