A related question: DS is so grounded in reality, that sometimes, I feel like it's hard for him to come up with pretend things. For example, when I ask him "so, what do you think the fox's in this story's favorite food would be?" a lot of times, his response is, "I don't know, what is it?" like he is looking to be given the RIGHT answer, you know? And I try to explain that there IS no right answer, we are just making it up, and whatever he thinks is fine, but it's a hard concept for him to wrap his head around. (Though oddly, he can make up stories about number people swimming in the Arctic which is x miles deep, sliding on a big rainbow slide, and having fun talking about their lucky numbers etc etc. ...I'm not sure where the flip is in that respect, tbh.)
Does anyone else see this? Especially with their young math/science kids?
My son who was an early reader is very into math and science, and was given negative feedback in K because of this type of thing. He is very creative at home, and comes up with complex, long-term pretend scenarios that go on for weeks/months, but if asked what a snowman would do at night after reading a story about snowmen coming alive he won't give the expected creative answer. He just wouldn't play along- not at all.
I asked him about it last year after his teacher told me in a parent/teacher conference that he wasn't creative and couldn't pretend (because of the snowman incident), and he said it just seemed ridiculous to him.
Both of my children took stories very seriously. The tv show SuperWhy on PBS freaked them out as toddlers because they didn't like that the characters CHANGED the story.
So I don't know - he had an imaginary friend from 2-4 years old who he talked about so much and in such great detail that on more than one occasions over the years his preschool teachers actually thought I had another child. And even today, at almost 7, he has made up a pretend country, complete with a pretend government, customs and laws that he talks about a lot.
