My son is turning 4 next month and has a wild imagination. I love hearing his hilarious stories:). Over the past couple months he has developed a group of imaginary friends and now he actually has conversations with them. Kinda freaky but cute at the same time. Has anyone else been going through this with their little ones?

Awesome, have to say nothing that cool, but dd4 does do an awe inspiring whinny when she's pretending to be a horse. I guess though she does have a name for every bird she crosses paths with, ie: my pinky blackbird and seagully etc. oh and also windy, that naughty naughty wind.

Have you seen this article in psychology today?

My DS8 had three imaginary friends, and he worked at imaginary work places (Figinzga and later Pullweeds) LOL. His imaginary friends names were Secada, Fichael (pronounced same as Michael but with an F) and I forget the third one's name. Fichael was a real character! The stories and adventures with that guy were riot. Ultimately, the three of them died in a car accident (!) which is when they got fazed out, but I miss those guys. My Ds8 would also tell me elaborate stories about his life before he was born to me. According to him, he lived before, in India, his mom's name was Ping. He described his whole way of life and it was eerie because it sounds a lot like how life would be in India. He loved to an old age though and had two daughters (they had names too - I forget what their names were). We are not Indian. I have no idea where any of this came from but DS is rather creative. My niece also had an imaginary friend named "spotty." Spotty was an orphan who followed her home one day from the park and never left LOL. My younger DS never had an imaginary friend but he always had the older DS to entertain him and such so I think that had something to with it. Younger DS also just isn't as "in his own head" as much as older DS. Older DS is the type that has whole worlds and stories and such in his head at any given time. He can entertain himself by just "leaving mentally" - which sounds odd but... He is the one that gets hit by "creative shocks" aka stories/scenes coming to him out of nowhere. Younger DS is more grounded in reality.

Yes, my DD10 had a huge stable of imaginary cats between the ages of 3 and 5. I wrote down all their names at one point, but there were three who were with us the most. We had to watch out not to step on them, open doors for them, etc. At the time, they sometimes got annoying, but I now look back on the phase fondly. She gave her animals the craziest names, too--my favorite was Golden Retreefrog (like golden retriever--it was a golden tree frog).

DD also invented an imaginary brother before she had a real one, and actually convinced the workers at her child care that he existed. (!!!!) This is even weirder because she gave him some outlandish name--I wish I remember what it was, but it was nutso. (DD has a standard American name, so it would have been pretty odd for us to give our other child this name.)

At one point DS11 had an imaginary sister (yes, outlandish name) and wrote long stories about the whole family that included her.

DD10 has always had a tremendous imagination. She has even had adults fooled several times now into believing she has an older brother. She brought DD8 into the game too and the two of them working together on this farse is totally believable.

Both girls have huge memory capacities so they can keep it going or come back to things much later and pick up right where they left off.

I don't think we have ever been really concerned that either girl can't distinguish between reality and their imagination, but they do take it pretty far sometimes. Lately (even still at 8 and 10 years old) they have been pretending to run a daycare. We have several imaginary toddlers, etc running around our house that I've accidently sat on or bumped into. I apologize, dust whoever it is off, and go on.

At 6, my DS is still going strong with his imaginary friends - only, his imaginary friends now take the form of superheroes - they also know all kinds of martial arts, have powers and cool weapons and transportation methods, can beat up bad guys effortlessly and have a very strong resemblence to Star Wars characters

DS2.7 was committed to a script where he and I were a mother and baby bat. That plot lasted about 2 months around Christmas, when he was just 2, and he was so attached to the role that he even referred to us exclusively as "Mummy Bat" and "Baby Bat", including in his sleep talking. I ran with it. He's gone through countless other mother-baby pairs, where we act like the animals, talk about and act out various facts about the animals, and build imaginary homes for them.

Lately, he's into making and animating creatures he builds out of lego, and personifying his trucks and stuffed animals as children. It provides interesting insight into how he perceives our family dynamics, because the babies are invariably happy, use positive self-talk, discuss their emotions in "hypothetical" situations, and talk at length about loving their mothers. As the play parent, DS is solicitous, gentle, and endlessly patient. It's heartwarming.

Thank you indigo for that article! That was an interesting read:). I love all these stories you guys are posting! The imaginary friend stage is SO entertaining. The psychology behind some of it can be pretty interesting as well. Great storytellers are what these children will become:D

My son from about 3.5-almost 4 (which is now) had a whole imaginary class where he was the teacher. I'd always have to leave the car door open long after he was strapped in to allow all his students to get in to. we'd most often take at least some of his students with us where ever we went. He also tended to have gym class with his students while he was in the shower each night. It's only in the last week or two that his imaginary class has disappeared (instead he's been on a learning mission).

My DS6 has a whole squad of alter egos that are sort of like imaginary friends. He has one for every occasion. He will often pull one of them out when there is IKEA furniture to be built.

He even created a team of kids at school and encouraged them to have alter egos.

When DS was about 6-7, he and his best friend pretended they were really alien royalty here in disguise. This game went on for sooo long and they were sooo consistent with it that I eventually had to check he knew it wasn't real. Oh the disparaging look I got for being so stupid