Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Parenting the super-imaginative child

Anyone have any thoughts on this? My DS5 is Mr. Storyteller. Give him a minute and he will weave you a fascinating and complex tale. I am trying to encourage his creative side by helping him write down his stories since his own writing ability can't keep pace with what he is producing in his head. I just had a conference with his kindergarten teacher who also recognizes is creative streak and wants to support it as well because she sees how he lights up at these activities compared to his general attitude of polite disinterest for most of the more rote activities.

Some of my concerns, however, are:

1. I can't always tell if he believes what he is saying is true or not. I generally assume he does not, but sometimes I wonder because he is so earnest in his telling. So, for example, he tells me that he does all of these crazy things at night while I'm asleep. Or, as a small example from today, he was writing a list of his friends at school. I observed that he only wrote down boys' names and asked him if he ever played with girls. He said no, but they chase me sometimes and pull on my arms. Mildly concerned by this description, I ask for more details. He tells me that all of the girls in all the grades at school pull on his arms at the same time. Clearly, this didn't happen and I am 99 percent sure he is just putting me on, but there is that 1 percent that thinks wow he really seems to believe that happened!

2. He is a storyteller and that sometimes includes not telling the truth. I can't always trust him to be honest and we have talked about how that affects whether I can trust him. I have nightmares of what it will be like when he is a teenager!

3. Telling the difference between reality and fantasy, and the related fears. He asks me all the time if fanciful characters are real or not, because I guess he is just not sure. I have to be really straightforward (No vampires are NOT real, even if the little girl at daycamp said she was one!) and I still don't think he always believes me. He is totally freaked out by the thought of leprechauns and the Tooth Fairy coming into his room. He is terrified of mascot-like characters, although he seems to be getting past that now, thank goodness.

So, just thought I'd throw this out there and see what your experiences have been. The "alligator in the toilet" thread made me think to bring it up for discussion here.

Sounds like what happens when you take an age-appropriate activity (making up fanciful fibs for mom) and turbo charge it with above average creativity and intelligence.

For better or for worse, he'll probably grow out of it.

{sigh}

I don't really have any advice since my child's imagination is good but really just contained to playing pretend...it's pretty easy to tell when she's in and when she's out, so to speak. Though she was always freaked out by those mascot type characters (real people dressed up) and visiting Santa and wouldn't go anywhere near the giant Easter Bunny.

But just wanted to say that your son sounds like a really fun guy and your description of his tales made me laugh. What a character. Writing his stories down seems like a really good idea.

Oh yes LNEsMom, I too have the super-imaginative child living here! Throughout preschool, which was a play based program, they made use of it first by writing down the stories she dictated and then by having the kids act out them out when she moved on to writing plays. She was always VERY sincere in her storytelling/believing. We took a Baltic cruise when she was 4 1/2 and she wore a crown every single day. When we visited castles she gave me tours because she "used to live here." The actor playing the king at Dover Castle was thrown totally off his game when she ran up to him and said "Father - don't tell me you don't remember my name!" We learned to say "princess" in every language across Northern Europe that summer

I think it was while she was dealing with grief over her grandfather's death that her first imaginary friend appeared. Everyone told me it was a great coping mechanism. That first friend, her "daughter named Sunflower”, stuck around for about 3 years. She was eventually joined by 96 others and DD would proudly tell people that she was "Princess DD" and she had 97 children. She would scold them, chase them and console them when they too lost a beloved family member. It was sweet, touching and at times a bit scary. I still make sure that I listen to hear DD do both voices when she is engaged in an imaginary conversation - I just want to make sure she isn't actually hearing voices in her head because it seems so real to her sometimes.

I explained to her that she has to be very, VERY careful about not telling me the truth because if even 1 time she lies to me she can't expect me to believe her when she is telling the truth. We discussed the difference between make believe and lying and it really hasn't been a problem. In fact she is VERY precise with her language and I have had to defend her from a punitive teacher in the past who accused her of lying. (Interestingly each time I was able to uncover the facts that showed she was indeed being truthful. That sort of ticked the teacher off...)

One time last year during her terrible kindergarten year she got in trouble for not coming immediately at the end of recess. She explained that she and her 2 friends were playing a game and the "bad guys" had her tied to a railroad track when the teacher gave them the signal that recess was over. "Mommy I tried and tried - really I did. But I just couldn't break the ropes. I got there as soon as I could." I went right into the fantasy game with her and told her that whatever game she is playing the teacher's signal is the magic potion that will break her free. It can get her out of any jail, ropes, dungeon, well or any other place she is being held. That totally solved the problem.

She doesn't do the same sort if intense imaginative play now that she is 7. She is enrolled in 2 acting classes, though, so she may be expressing it there. It's also hard to find other kids that can get into it so deeply with her. If I ask her questions now she usually says "Mom you do realize this is make believe - right?" They are starting to do some creative writing at school. She is dysgraphic but comes up with really great stories very quickly. I actually have a meeting this afternoon with our newly hired educational consultant to discuss how to approach this with the school. She obviously has a talent for writing even if she can't write - if that makes any sense.

So I would say enjoy it, write down the stories and keep them someplace to treasure later. We were lucky that DD never got scared by the imaginative stuff - for her it was just about all fun (or sometimes a coping mechanism). Anything scary became a chance to empower her - she could stand up to them herself or she could let me loose on them. She seems to think that I am a pretty formidable opponent and NO ONE would dare hurt my kid...

Telling tall tales and outright lying are both perfectly normal for a five year old.
http://www.aacap.org/cs/root/facts_for_families/children_and_lying
http://www.scholastic.com/resources/article/the-truth-about-lying

I think this is one form of asynchronous development that many parents of gifted kids have probably encountered. You have children with big thoughts and wild (even overexcitable) imaginations, but they're not as well-developed emotionally as intellectually. Any difference would usually be in degree, though-- again, perfectly normal behavior.

Oh boy do I know this one. When DD9 was in pre-school, she had me throughly convinced that she was being punched by a certain kid on a regular basis. I would question her and give her advice about involving the grown-ups. DD describe detailed scenarios to me, including teacher responses. The whole thing kept escalating. DD would be in tears as she told me about it. I was thoroughly convinced that my kid was being physically bullied by this kid.

When I finally went to speak with the teacher, the teacher said that my kid never interacted with the alleged perpetrator. She also told me that they had been keeping a close eye on the other child because she had been the subject of bullying by a different kid. The teacher said that she would keep a close eye on things over the next week. She also recommended not confronting DD but to just stop asking about it and see if things changed. Sure enough, when I stopped asking DD about it, the "hitting" disappeared. I have no idea why the whole story started but I bought into it hook, line & sinker.

DD also had a hard time distinguishing between visual media and reality. She was terrified of things as benign as Care Bears. Through second grade we had to warn people when she went to sleepover birthday parties that Dd could not handle movies. She has outgrown a lot of it but still hates movies because they are too stressful. She can only handle things where she knows the ending, i.e. Hugo, where she had read the book.

Well, it's nice to know I'm not alone! lol There are some great stories here!

As for the reality/fantasy issue, I have been super clear with him about that, I think, but he still questions me frequently and will sometimes argue with me when I tell him something is not real. He doesn't do a lot of pretend play per se, but I feel like there is much more going on inside his head than he let's on, if you kwim? I also play into the stories, but I'm never really sure how much either approach is helping. So, for example, to alleviate his fear of the Tooth Fairy coming for his brother's tooth (they share a room) I finally told him that the Tooth Fairy is terrified of frogs and since his head board has a frog on it, there is no way she will come anywhere near him!

My other related concern is that his talents are going to be missed at school, since this creativity is not uniformly recognized or appreciated. His K teacher is great but a different teacher might not react the same. He is not disruptive in class, he just seems to not be that invested in most of the activities. I have not had him tested, and I'm not even sure if he would cooperate right now. He does not possess that need to show adults what he knows that other kids seem to have. His stories are really the only time you see him excited to share something.

I am hoping that spending more time with him one-on-one (he's also my middle child!) writing his stories will give me a better insight into his internal world and maybe I will be able to draw him out some more.

My youngest was highly imaginative and still is. When he was about that age, he lived a great deal of the time in fantasy. I recall being asked frequently by strangers what level he was in martial arts only to have tell them he was dueling light sabers in his head, not practicing moves of any sort. I made sure all of us told him frequently what was real and not real, but I do think the lines were blurred for him for a while. He grew out of it with time.

And you're right - some teachers will value the creativity while others will find your child less than their ideal student, but that is likely true for amost all children. It is rare when the teacher's reaction to your child becomes a truly destructive environment. We've had it happen twice - once we rode out and helped our child learn how to cope and once we moved him to a different teacher. But there have also been teachers who have said that it was a joy to teach our son, years where he thrived. So it really is like a box of chocolates.

Then again, I used to have an imaginary friend who had a seat at our kitchen table and spent hours listening to all of my stories while the two of us were on the backyard swings. Thinking back, it was pretty sweet to have a friend that let me do all the talking.

Wow, this brings back memories. When dd11 was in K, she regularly convinced her teacher that we had gone to the zoo the day before, gotten a new puppy, that dh's family lived in Italy (they are Italian, but all live in the U.S.)...

At 11, she is still a very creative kiddo with many ideas that will probably never come to fruition but maybe they will. She was driving her sister crazy a few days ago by spending hours working out jingles and commercials for Domino's Pizza all outloud. I try not to crush her ideas although I did find it hard to not point out that you cannot defame other fast food joints in your commercials since her jingle involved three other restaurants, one of whose food tasted like a word she also couldn't use on TV -- lol!

We have found school to be a harder fit for a child whose interests are so much not in the academic realm (Hollywood make-up artistry, fashion design, writing commercial jingles...) and who is so out of the box in how she approaches academics. None the less, she rarely has teachers who don't like her. It is just a balancing act to find a way to get her placed appropriately academically and not crush her into a box she doesn't fit in.

FWIW, I don't think that she makes up major stories or lies to us or her teachers at this point.

We have 2 of them here. DDs 9 and 4 can spin tales like there's no tomorrow. We have concerns off and on with DD4 about her understanding of the differences between reality and fantasy, but since the older one got through her craziness ok we're relying on the same thing happening with the younger one. (We'll let you know if it doesn't happen.)