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"Not Seeing" Is Believing
The Real Life of Imaginary Friends By Mark Stackpole
Not So UnusualFrom a famously fictitious cat to doll-sized humans, imaginary friends can clearly take many forms.
"People often think of only invisible friends, but if you include objects that children personify and animate, like stuffed animals and dolls, the proportion of children with imaginary friends goes up quite a bit," says Tracy Gleason, an associate professor of psychology at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Mass. "I have usually found about a quarter of the children I interview have invisible friends, but closer to 50 to 60 percent have some sort of imaginary companion."
For most children, imaginary friends are a lot of fun, much like other forms of fantasy and pretend play, says Gleason. "Sometimes children create them when they are lonely, and sometimes they do so when they are working out some sort of emotional issue. Children also use them as a way to be the expert in the context of conversations with their parents; after all, no one knows more about their imaginary friends than they do."
"If they feel their child is spending too much time with the invisible friend and not with real friends, then the parent could respond in a manner similar to what they would do if the child was spending too much time at any activity that took the child away from peers," she says. However, Gleason is very careful to point out that she has never encountered a situation where parents have felt the need to establish these boundaries.
