I didn't have an imaginary friend growing up.
I also didn't have any real friends, but that is a different conversation.
Talking with a client today about imagination development and problem-solving ability (inspired by what I was writing about yesterday), he was saying how he had an imaginary friend growing up. And estimates are that until relatively recently, around 50% of kids had imaginary friends when young. But this has dropped off significantly as instead of having imaginations, screens have captured the imagination.
I think that the drop in imaginary friends is another indicator to the reduction in skillset and depth. Humans are creative animals that are able to predict the future through complex modelling systems, as well as imagine what doesn't exist. And an imaginary friend is a way to explore the world, navigate complexity and process experience. They give a child a sounding board to practice upon and test ideas, as well as problem-solve for solution to challenges.
But having an imaginary friend takes effort and mental space, because it has to be created and interacted with. Which is why so few children have imaginary friends now, because their lives are either so structured and filled with schedules and activities, or for most, filled with a constant stream of compelling content that distracts them from thinking.
My daughter doesn't have an imaginary friend.
She has imaginary worlds.
The main one is "Mouseland", which is a place filled with magic and lore, and a growing history and culture, including celebration events. There are other lands too, similarly named, and my daughter (who has considered herself a mouse for about six years now), can visit with her own magic skills. The other lands are not as fleshed-out as Mouseland, but they each have their own type of magic and habits.
On top of this, she has her soft toys, with most of them having their own name, and many of them having a personalities and behaviours and beliefs that are unique to them. I am often quite surprised at not only how complex some of these personalities can be, but also how she can keep them consistent over long periods of time. They are more than play things, they are characters in her experiential world.
Talking to her yesterday while she was cleaning her room, she told me that instead of disliking the cleaning, she has decided that each thing she has to put away is living, and she has a conversation with it to get it to go home to its right place. Some of the items are willing, some not willing, and some are funny and silly, and mess around. While unnecessary, her room was cleaned far faster than if she did what she normally does, and gets distracted by anything else.
What I think is interesting with this kind of child's play, is it provides a huge amount of learning and practice opportunities to not only face problems, but also in how to overcome them by essentially giving advice to oneself. When her toy bunny has a problem, she thinks through the situation and comes up with a solution. It allows her the chance to test her personal theories, as well as get experience as an interested third-party observer, friend, and confidante.
Again, like I was saying about reading, this kind of activity supports the development of a huge cluster of skill areas across the mental and emotional sectors, as well as tying them to physical reality. When children play like this, they are part of the experience as both a participant, and a guiding force, a victim, and an agent of change. The emotional development associated with this kind of play may be vital for building the skills necessary for navigating real-world relationships with other humans. But because we are flooding our systems and hijacking our attention with largely useless consumer content, we are limiting our exposure to and the skills needed to build quality relationships.
For many years I have believed (and I think my beliefs are now vindicated), that overconsumption leads to a lack of imagination. As I have said for a long time already, the more we consume, the less we create, and I believe this is having a fundamental impact on children, where the majority from a young age are consuming far more at a far higher rate, but are degrading in skillset. Intelligence isn't about how much one can recall from what one consumes, it is about what is able to be done with what is known.
Quoting Shakespeare, doesn't make you Shakespeare.
Practice makes perfect.
Well, as Vince Lombardi correctly corrected, perfect practice makes perfect. But regardless, repetition is the key to skill development. And, repetition is also the key to building habits, good and bad. There might not be such a thing as perfect practice for children or anyone, but practicing the human skills we need is vital to be able to face and overcome the challenges we are going to face. Consuming a lot of content doesn't practice to develop much skill, but it is a repetitive process that embeds the habit of low-value consumption.
My client today was telling a story about how he and his cousin as young teens would travel the forty kilometres to the city. And every time, his cousin wanted to go to McDonald's to eat, saying that his dream would be to work there, getting paid in food. Forty years later, his cousin looks like his dream came true. The habits built to value low-quality food in childhood, carried all the way through his life, and he is not happy with the outcome.
Careful what you wish for.
Similarly, imaginary worlds can be a double-edged knife, because while it is possible to use our imagination to build skill so we can, it is equally possible to use our imagination to limit ourselves and create excuses why we can't. I suspect that a lot of the imagination created by over-consumers is more geared toward the "I can't" type, where they are victims of circumstance, as they haven't developed the practical skills of being an agent of change in their environment.
A consumer is always reliant on the feed.
And the quality of the feed matters too. But more importantly perhaps, is the practice with the experience to develop the skills. The speed of content delivery today doesn't give space to the brain to use what is consumed, to make it a lesson. Instead, it is quickly put to the side to be replaced by the next bit of content, and then the next. It is like having a tube down the through, being fed without tasting the meal. And without that taste, what is eaten isn't experienced, isn't savoured, and isn't replicable.
Maybe I need to create an imaginary friend for myself.
If I were to create one, I would want it to be one that helps me be my best, that supports me to push through challenge and overcome, to try without freezing in fear of failure, to push myself toward my outer limits, to learn from my world, and keep practicing to improve myself and the world around me.
A friend indeed.
Taraz
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Sometimes an image from someone else tells us our own story. Your photograph today touched my soul in a very special way, reminding me of the light of my daughter Sofía, who passed away at 11. In that photo, there's a look at childhood that is universal and eternal. Thank you for capturing that pure essence that transcends the screen and unites us in the most human thing: the love for our children. A big hug, my friend.
It is hard to always capture the "right" image for the post, but I normally try to sort through what I have and see what fits. This is one from when we first moved into this house, about five years ago.
One of the reasons our ancestors were thinkers was because they had a lot of time to do so, their days were not stuffed with meaningless entertainment. They had a lot of alone time and so that naturally led to thinking and using their imagination.
Not so today's world. Today, the screens take up most of our time, we rarely have time to imagine or to think. The saddest thing is that that's how children of today are mostly raised and parents don't see any problem raising their kids that way.
And today's kids will raise their own kids the same way...you can imagine how bad society would be several decades or a century from now. The only solution to this problem, as I see it, is enlightening people on this issue.
And I think they also had a lot of together time, discussing life as they knew it, and how things might be better.
I used to have an imaginary friend. I think it was more to work things out that were going on in my head but I can't say for sure. Either way, I can see the benefit of it.
I think it is healthy. It is an expression of the internal dialogue we have I guess.
Many of us these days have become consumers of content especially the low-end ones as we have access to them on social media. There is no limit to the amount of content we are exposed to and many of them have no advantage or good for our wellbeing. Some people say we are subtotal of what we read and are exposed to.
Sadly, it has even affected our imaginary system of reasoning. And many of us forget that it is out of our imagination that creativity sets in. As you said, repetition I the key so if we keep consuming without enough time to process then it will amount to disasters.
I think we are heading for disaster. I don't see any potential turnaround that will be implemented fast enough to avert it.
I think part of what you are describing is girls vs boys. Our son did a lot of playing growing up, but it was mostly with Lego type sets and figures. Our daughter does that as well, but in addition to that she creates complex social structures using animals. She went through the phase of unicorns, cats, dogs and now alpacas. All of those had extensive families, relatives, names and very complex social structures :)
I am not sure it a a boy v girl thing, though I do think that the way they play might affect it. Boys might use "tools" more than girls in the sense that they have something set, like with lego. My daughter loves lego still, though she has never really got into the dolls in the same way as some of her friends.
I am sure you are enjoying the most beautiful phase of the life. spending time with the little id at home is always wonderful and a small conversation daily always helps in shaping their brain. they need attention and likewise need guidance. Feed them appropriately, that is what important during their imaginary world.
This is what we seem to keep failing at globally.
I think that her talent for building whole worlds and characters for her toys shows just how imaginative she is. It emphasize how crucial it is to develop creativity in kids ;)
I hope she does something useful with it in the future.
I love how the little angel do handle every situations, we adult regardless can learn one or two ideology,the way she handled the problem. That's one.
Now, I believe bringing imagination is nice an uplifting to the soul for greater achievement but if no workforce and smart work isn't rendered the equation isn't balanced. Then when having a close pal that thinks and visualize like you do, perfect! It makes imagination and the ideas to be turned into reality. There's also the negative aspect relating to imaginative thoughts, it really can be cause stagnation when it's all in negative. @tarazkp thank you for these, I have learnt something.
Glad you thought about it :)
We often dismiss childhood play as just fun, but your breakdown shows it's actually vital practice for social and emotional intelligence. The McDonald’s story is a perfect (and sad) example of how the habits we feed in childhood whether physical or mental ,set the trajectory for decades.
And it only takes being a little off line, to be a long way off target later.
Yes, it's exponential
Just stumbling in to this post and this is so relatable. Your daughter reminds me of little sisters, she likes playing with her toys and giving them an imaginary character that fits them.
Sometimes our imagination can not just be positive but negative also. We can get up with some imagination that will never come into existence and we might blame it on our incapability or lack of skills.
I reckon most of us today have minds that hold us back in things we should be doing.
Sometimes there is a lot that we can learn from little kids, there ambitions and charisma are very wild. I feel this kids are more ambitious than us. Most of us adult are not creating but are depending on others for value.
If we can have time to create more then things we get better.
Hearing about the imaginary world of your daughter is so interesting. Most of us have really lost our imaginative and creative skills because of too much consuming of short content. I can't lie this has also affected me and I really want to change things.
My favorite author's book: [Literature] Johann Gottlieb Fichte: The Vocation of the Scholar 2/24
We all need that imaginary friend, not just to have fun with but to push us to become a better friend. I don't want endless entertainment that does not lead to anywhere, I'm more focused on self improvement only.
Thank you