I may be a little off topic here but this reminds me of dd3 who complains about how she "cannot do anything in this house" where anything refers to painting the living room wall and jumping off a self-made futon cushion tower,etc. she often talks about going away and being on her own. She asks me to tell her the story of the baby bird that flew away and built its own nest. She actually made up and told me the entire story and then asks me to retell it to her. She has made up stories of her getting lost in the woods and living with animals. One thing that seems to work is to verbalize the emotions behind these stories and statement. I say to her, for example, " do you feel helpless that you are small and cannot do whatever you want to do and think it would be better to be an adult" she says yes and then I can start to talk about growing up, independence, consequences (the need to play within rules(social, moral,ethical,etc) even as a grown up. Another thing that has helped me figure out her inner state is to tell her that one of her pretend children is saying to her the exact same things she says to me and asking her how she is going to respond. I have been amazed at some things I have learnt from this exercise.
