Imagination

Harrison loves to take things to day care for show and tell, but he's only allowed to do it once a month, so instead he’s started taking imaginary toys (or as he says “pretending toys”).  He "holds" them in the car all the way to day care, carefully cradles them in his hands as he walks in, tells his carers what his imaginary toy is today and pretends to put it in the show and tell box. At the end of the day he's still acting as though there's a toy he has to put in his bag, or get me to hold while he washes his hands etc.  At home this morning he had so many imaginary toys in his hands that he couldn’t get up into his chair for breakfast.  He puts an imaginary train on the tracks along with a real one, and talks through a whole scenario around the race between the two trains and what they say to each other etc.

 

The other day when I picked him up from day care he claimed to have left Spencer (imaginary train de jour) behind.  I tried to persuade him that I could see Spencer in his bag, but he'd have none of it.  So I tried another tack and said I'd see if there was a spare Spencer in the glove box of

the car.  Sure enough, he fell for that one, and held the "new" imaginary Spencer for a while.  But after 5 minutes or so he announced

that he didn't like the new Spencer and wished he could go back to day care to get his old one. Aggghhh...  

 

It's actually not a bad phase because he can be totally distracted by something that isn't there – I don't have to worry about bringing toys for him to play with when we go out, as we can invent something at any time.  This morning our whole trip to day care was taken up with him describing what colour lollies he had (along with appropriate grunts and groans while he “made” them) then him asking me which one I’d like, passing imaginary lollies back and forth, offering me a drink of milk in case my lollies were too spicy… It’s quite fun.