By Linda Shiue

My daughter's 2^nd grade teacher has given a really fun, year-long class assignment.  She has a Curious George doll who is sent home with a different student each week, along with a journal.  The student is supposed to write each day about Curious George's adventures and mischief.  My daughter has George this week.  I took a look at what the previous kids had written, and was struck by how busy with activities many of her classmates are, and how varied their lives are.

In a previous post, I talked about how it is sometimes difficult to get detailed information from your kids at the end of the day.  Curious George, or another such stand-in, seems to be a great way to get kids to talk not only about what they did, but how they felt about their experiences, their understanding of various situations they found themselves in, their worries, and perhaps also their fantasies about what they would like to do if they could get away with it.  

Examples of these, excerpted from the class Curious George journal:

Activities- soccer, Arabic class, piano, Tae Kwon Do, Chinese school

Discipline-"I took Curious George to tea...While my mommy and I were not looking he stole some sugar cubes from the sugar bowl.  Then he knocked over his tea cup.  What a mess! We decided that he needed to learn better manners, so we took him home."

"Curious George went on the bus with me.  He stole one dollar and ripped it...When I got home I said to Curious George, 'you will be in your room until tomorrow morning and have dinner in your room.'"

Worries-  "When papa and I went to the movies Curious George made too much noise and we got kicked out."

Thoughts of mischief- "When I got home, George was spreading confetti all over the place.  Then, he did kung fu, he kicked and punched all the tables and doors in the house.  I told him stop that curious behavior.  Before dinner, George played with matches. I told him to stop playing with matches."

Studies in child development and psychology have shown, in fact, that there can be great value in having a doll like Curious George, or another such "humanized object," or similarly, having an imaginary friend.  Psychologists say that having imaginary friends is a normal part of childhood development; around 65% of children aged between three and nine report having an imaginary friend.  Most commonly it is first born or only children who have imaginary friends.

This figure sounds a bit high to me-- while I have heard of imaginary friends, I only know of one child who has an imaginary friend.  My friends' son, Oliver, started talking about his friend, Dorothy, between the ages of 2 and 2-1/2.  Dorothy, it took me months to realize, is male.  He is mentioned multiple times a day, pretty much every day, and seems to have quite the adventurous life.  Oliver's mom told me that Dorothy "flies airplanes all over the world (went to 'Sacramento Asia' this morning - usually to places he's heard us talk about or visited); Dorothy has rocket ships, cars - really big cars - occasionally 'knows everything'."  Dorothy seems to be brought up most often when others are having conversations in Oliver's presence, but not including him.  Oliver has also been starting to use Dorothy stories to divert attention from topics he'd rather not talk about, such as potty training.  As varied as Dorothy's adventures are his characteristics: Dorothy can be any given age on any given day, consistently has a mom, dad and brother, but other sibs/relatives come and go.  "Sometimes," Oliver's mom says, "Oliver calls Dorothy on his play phone and has what sound like great conversations - it really does sound like you're hearing one end of a normal conversation."

Fascinating stuff, right? 

Not only is having an imaginary friend a normal part of child development, but recent research has shown that kids who have imaginary friends are more likely to be better communicators and story tellers than those without.  According to psychologist Evan Kidd at Melbourne, Australia's La Trobe University, children with imaginary friends are better at learning to communicate than other children because they have a lot of practice at inventing interactions with their friends, which helps them improve their conversational skills. 

He also found that the benefits of having an imaginary friend may also be long lasting: in another study, Kidd found adults who remembered having an imaginary friend to be more creative, achievement oriented and emotionally responsive than those who did not recall having had an imaginary friend. 

Did you ever have an imaginary friend? How old were you, and what was his or her name? What did you and your imaginary friend do together?