My kids were watching a Dora The Explorer video this evening. Dora is one of those shows that encourages the audience to yell at the screen. “Where is my star?” asks Dora confusedly with the star sitting next to her foot “Can you tell me where it is?” Then she pauses to give kids a chance to yell at the screen before discovering that her star is in fact right there. My kids eat this up. They love it. They were happily watching and shouting through two episodes. Amusingly Kiki, who is 10, was the loudest shouter. Isn’t 10 the age when kids are supposed to decide this kind of show is stupid?
Then the shouting turned angry.
Kiki: “I got the wish!”
Gleek: “I got the wish!”
K: “No! I did!”
G: “No! I did!”
K: “Me!”
G: “Me!” It repeated with increased volume until I came up the stairs to play mediator. It turns out that at the end of the program Dora tossed a wish out for the audience to catch. My 10 year old and my 4 year old were arguing over who had caught this wish. I laughed and asked “Could you find something even sillier to argue about?” Kiki and Gleek grinned sheepishly. No, they didn’t think they could find anything sillier. Problem resolved I turned to head back downstairs.
G: “I caught the wish!”
K: “No I did!”
Hmm. Obviously the fight would continue unless I mediated further. Usually when there is contention over a toy and no clear rightful ownership, I confiscate the toy. So I marched up to Kiki and demanded that she hand over the wish. She reached into her pocket, pulled out an imaginary wish, and placed it into my hand. I repeated the process with Gleek. I then announced that the wishes were going to jail and they needed to find something else to play. I found that after carrying these wishes downstairs in my hand I had to throw them in the direction of the jail box before I could be done with them. How do kids make imaginary objects so real?
Later this evening Gleek put on her thinking cap to assist with her reading. This was a detailed process of setting the cap on her head, twisting something near her temple, and then tapping her temples with her index fingers while squinting her eyes. It was definitely a very thinking face. She gave me a long explanation that the twisting was what sorted her thoughts and lined them up. Then she could see what she needed. When we were done reading she carefully took off the cap and placed it on the shelf. “I just can’t sleep with it.” She informed me with a charming sideways tilt to her head as if this fact were obvious. I suppose not. No one wants to be too thinky when they’re trying to sleep.
Through the years we’ve had a pocket sized imaginary friend named Louie, a magic washing machine, a myriad of imaginary animals, and lost “hugs” that we needed to search all over the house to find. It might seem that finding a lost imaginary object would be easy, but no, the kids delight in making grown-ups search all over. They definitely see things that I don’t. I can remember doing that. I remember pretending so strongly that I could see/feel/hear everything I was pretending. Sometimes if I’m not paying attention I can still do it. I think that unselfconsciousness is the key. Or at least a key. Roleplaying provides a venue for this sort of thing as does acting. I don’t have much time for roleplaying or acting in adult forms. So I guess I’ll just stick to confiscation of contentious wishes.
Now I know why I sometimes can’t go to sleep… I forgot to take the thinking cap off!
If only it were that easy.
I love the logic of littles. My son decided during his trip to my parents’ house that he was not, in fact, Blueeyes anymore. He was Meemaw, and as such, he didn’t live in my house, in Houston. He lived in Oxley, Arkansas, with Papaw. My mother became Blueeyes, and thus should be the one who came to my house.
They finally convinced him to come for a “visit” for a few days to my house. He continued to be Meemaw, across the board, refusing to answer to his true name, for more than a week, because he wasn’t ready to come home (he loves the woods at my mom’s house, and all the dogs). It wasn’t until we sat at the table to have lunch and I announced to him (Meemaw) that I had a new book in the car for Blueeyes “and won’t he be excited when he sees it?” that he pronounced “I’m Blueyes!”
Still.. it was all completely logical, gender-and-age swapping notwithstanding. The brat even went so far as to keep calling me by my given name or calling me “Daughter.” sheesh. Still, a good story to tell when he’s got a girlfriend over for the first time later in life… muahahahahahahaha (I kid. Really!)
My son wants to be an inventor/scientist when he grows up… thusly, he has constructed SEVERAL imaginary Transformers for each family member. Plus, he loves animals so we all have imaginary flying squirrels and cats and now because of the movie, penguins.
Plus, I’m frequently quizzed on remembering all their names!
Plus, I’m reminded how they are in the car or racing the car or boosting the car with jet rockets, or flying around my head, or following us.
One day he wanted to give me another imaginary transformer or animal and I said, “I have 5 imaginary things swirling around me… it’s hard to keep track of them all so, I think 5 is enough imaginary things to have.”
He said, “Well, let me know when one dies and I’ll give you another one.”
I thought, ‘What? They die? How do you decide to imagine that?’
🙂