Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Very imaginative and exhausting

DS5 is almost constantly imagining something different than reality. His teachers like him and he is doing okay at school so I think it is at least manageable there.

Here are some examples:

He was cleaning rocks before putting them in his rock polisher machine. Instead of just thinking about how many, what type, or even just thinking about what he is actually doing, he cooks up a story that he says aloud to himself (I was could hear from another room). The rocks were actually a rock family, there was dialogue between the rocks with different accents, they had fears of being separated from the rocks we didn't collect, concerns over being made clean when they preferred to be dirty, they had complaints that the tumbling machine makes them dizzy. It went on and on and on.

We were on a hike but according to him we were being digested. The trail was the digested system and things we saw along the way were organs that did various things to us. Eventually we made it to the toilet (aka our car).

We were at the dog park with our dog. We have had our dog for two years. We are walking along and he suddenly starts pretending that our dog is a stray. That we were in this park and this friendly dog without an owner came up to us.

I was washing a pan. He was next to me saying, "Blah, this soap taste awful. No. Not the sprayer! Argh, it is cold! Ahh...the towel. Now that feels nice. It is like getting a massage before being put to bed on the shelf". When I asked him what he was saying he said, "I wasn't talking. It must have been the pan you heard"

He is "in character" a lot. He loves dressing up. No object is ever just what it really is for long.

I get that he is 5 and I don't mean to sound like a grump but this is near constant. I would like to sometimes have him in reality.

If I tell him "We are done being digested. Lets enjoy the hike and talk about what we really see", he'll sulk.

I will say if the experience is new, he'll be more involved in reality. So hiking in the forest is old news and open for embellishment so that slug is an intestinal parasite but checking out tide pools is a new experience so the limpet gets to stay a limpet (for now).

Anyone else have a kid like this?

It is kind of exhausting.

I'm there too. DD5 splits her time between reality and another dimension. I wouldn't mind so much except that during our
"scenes", I find myself in multiple roles while she simply directs.

LOL I love that!! What a COOL kid

He sounds like my two. For DD(now 10) there was a pretty broad grey area between reality and her rich imaginary world. Her biggest preoccupation was pretending that inanimate objects were living breathing things with feelings, opinions and the ability to communicate. Oh my.

DS8 is still stymied at school by the vastly fascinating world inside his head... so much so that the school thought he was having absence seizures (EEG came back normal). Nope, no seizures folks... he's just escaped to an alternative reality inside his skull. Be back in ten minutes. (Maybe).

Awesome kids all around, KJP and CCN!

Yes! I witnessed a heart wrenching goodbye between a banana peel, aluminum can and dirty diaper the other day. Apparently they had become best friends in the garbage bin and now had to part ways. There was some discussion that the peel and can could meet in the future if the compost grew a vegetable that was later canned in a can made from recycled materials. However, the diaper didn't stand a chance as it was headed to the landfill. There was some discussion among the three friends that perhaps instead of the diaper being chopped and burned (thank you Toy Story Three) that it could be buried whole and maybe become an artifact for some future civilization to find.

At this point he briefly emerged from the scene to question me about his brother's recent meals. This lead to him chastising his brother about his poor eating habits because when his poop was analyzed in the future, the conclusion would be that our civilization didn't know much about proper nutrition.

Eventually the three friends went their separate ways and the garbage was finally taken out.

Just so you guys don't think we are super gross, I want you to know these items were not together long. It was a fast friendship.:). Seriously, it was only a few minutes.

LOL

When DS was about 6-7ish, he and his also-gifted bestie pretended they were really aliens secretly placed here on Earth. Totally fine, except the game was so ridiculously thorough, detailed and consistent (it was referred to in probably every conversation) and so long lasting (like a year or two) that eventually I had to check that DS wasn't actually delusional and I'd have to take him to see a professional. He thought I was such an idiot for asking

Yes, this is also my reality with my 5 yr old son, or should I say 1005 yr old. He has made an elaborate story about how he was born 1000 yrs ago in a different universe and this is how he knows so much.

I laughed out loud when you mentioned the digestive system, as this came up while playing the other day with bubbles. The bubbles were part of a giants digestive system and were corrosive to human skin. We had to dodge them and try and climb the giants oesophagus (move from the grassed area to the deck) to escape them.

He also has had a host of imaginary friends in the past. When his brother was born, he had an imaginary daughter. He had told me her name, but in my sleep depravation I forgot her name. For weeks I kept asking if he could please tell me again, and he kept saying 'no, I've already told you'.

After about a month of still not knowing his imaginary daughter's name, he starts laughing when I've asked her name again. He just wouldn't stop laughing. It turned out that her name was 'No' and he was finding it so amusing that he had told me every time I had asked, but had never caught on.

So yes, and yes. I experience it and I am exhausted.

That is hilarious! I love it