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Living Next Door to Batman
Toddlers and Imaginary Friends By Wendy Kelly
According to Marjorie Taylor, author of Imaginary Friends and the Children who Create Them and Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon: "Children have a remarkable capacity to imagine alternative worlds even at an early age," says Marjorie Taylor, author of Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them (Oxford University Press, 2001) and professor of psychology at the University of Oregon. "They can navigate between their pretend friends and the real world with surprising dexterity."
Most toddlers believe in Santa Claus and have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality on television. As one young child explained when asked about characters on Sesame Street: "I know that Big Bird isn't real. That's just a costume. There's just a plain bird inside." But when it comes to their own pretend play, toddlers are surprisingly adept at flipping in and out of fantasy and reality.
One young boy had an elaborate pretend farm. When he overheard a group of his parents' friends talking about his farm, he whispered to his father: "Tell them it isn't a real farm."
In her research, Taylor has often encountered a child who helps the interviewer out by saying: "It's just pretend, you know," or, "She isn't real." Children have the ability to recognize the imaginary companion for what it is, according to Taylor, because it is "a private act of fantasy controlled by the child him or herself." We create cultural myths for the child and reinforce their reality at every possible turn: We leave out cookies for Santa, write notes from the Tooth Fairy and make up elaborate schemes about how the Easter Bunny lays eggs.
But imaginary companions are totally of the child's making, a