Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Very imaginative and exhausting

My five year old is also from another universe! He says he came here after his home planet was made temporarily uninhabitable by natural disasters and wars. He has explained that one thing that is very frustrating about being "the collection of cells I am today" is having adults boss him around all the time since he has already been an adult.

I think DD, almost 4, is also an alien. No wonder she keeps talking about moving back to Pluto every time she gets mad at me

My DD makes me assume so many roles during the course of a day that I often complain about multiple personality syndrome. I never know if I am a dinosaur, a very rude meat-eating cruel human being, a poor bird that has fallen out of her nest or one of the members of DD's imaginary bear family, etc, etc. I am my own self and her mom only about 10% of the day. Sigh!

so, so familiar. we realized this year that DD5 truly believes her true peers are adults. this is pretty great on a number of fronts (great conversations, excellent judgment, unbelievable maturity.)

but... the flip side is that it's flat-out exhausting - and she has no natural concept of parental leadership, so there's always lots of work to be done there! i have no idea how you guys with more than one of these survive. i never say this when people ask - but that's the real reason we stopped at one!

This thread brings back fond memories of my home planet (Planet X.)

DD7 and DD9 just recently decided to create some new imaginary friends. They discussed it, determined names, sex, age, etc. and started playing. We have always had imaginary pets, people, things over the years but I sort of thought maybe we were done with that.

They like to name everything in their rooms (sometimes with tiny scraps of paper taped to each thing) and stuffed animals, legos, Barbie's, etc. play out all sorts of roles and scenes.

They used to come up with wild, creative situations all the time no matter if we were in the grocery store, park, or at home - it didn't matter. However, I think at the age of your DS (5) it was more common for them than it is now at 7 and 9, so he may start to grow out of it soon. You didn't mention it, but is he an only child? If so, then I think that might make even more sense, for him to be so over-imaginative.

When DD7 was around 4 years old her pre-school teacher asked to talk to me one day. She asked if I just had the 2 girls or if I also had a son or maybe a nephew was living with us or something. I sort of laughed it off and told her I just have 2 girls and asked why she was wanting to know. She told me that DD had talked so much about her older brother in vivid detail that she thought I had an older son even though she was pretty sure I just had 2 girls. We laughed and laughed and she gave me some examples of what DD had been telling everyone. DD had him down so good in her mind that she never messed up in telling about him, so that made it seem to the teacher like he must be real. I later asked DD how her older brother was doing and she got such a sweet, impish smirk and proceeded to tell me all about him. I asked her how that got started and she told me she and her older sister were playing make believe one day with an older brother, so she just carried it over into school.

I'd say what is in our kids' heads is so much more exciting than real life that it can be hard for them.

IMHO - I have always told my girls if there is a book that has been made into a movie - they have to read the book first before watching the movie. What they can imagine while reading a book will be much better than the movie and if they watch the movie first it could mess with how they picture things in their head when they read the book. Now that they are older and have had a chance to read some books that are also movies, they agree with me. They have even made comments about how the movie director really messed certain things up or that wasn't how they pictured it when they read the book.

My mother always said if I'd been twins, she'd have drowned us both. Now that I have my own DD, I fully understand her feeling on that. There is never a moment of silence, and always some imaginary game going on that has to be explained to me in great detail -- usually in a cutesy, babyish tone of voice that drives her brother (and eventually, me) up the wall. But I can definitely see that she's just another me, so once in a while I look up in the general direction of where my mother's ghost is probably hanging out, and say, "yes, Mom. Stop laughing."

OMG that is so totally true about the history repeating!

and re: imaginary games - literally yesterday DD5 was making up these elaborate stories to go with word problems... 'OK, so i'm out in the yard with my sheep. you need to take 9 sheep from my ones column, but i only have two. so i go into the barn where my sheep are organized by 10s. i bring ten out, which gives me 12 to work with. then you take the nine, leaving me with three. on to the next column...' and then it's a story about aliens going to surgery...

ALL THIS when we already know she does high-number regrouping subtraction in her head... ha, although maybe this IS how she does it in her head - narration and all!

I hear you, but to me, he sounds imaginative and delightful. It can be frustrating when kids are in lala land and we're trying to hurry them along or asking for concrete responses. When he's older (or now, depending on his skills) encourage him to write these stories down. We started that with my DS6 and asked if he would write his thoughts and maybe a picture to go with it.
By the way, my son can be too "literal" (it goes both ways). One day he asked where "bewilderment" is. I explained that it means confusion and is not a "place." His response-- "no, the book says right here, 'he shook his head in bewilderment.'"

Ha ha ha! This happened to us, too! DD convinced the workers at her daycare that she had a baby brother named...I forget what, but something completely ridiculous. Now, DH DID do dropoff and pickup, but still. They asked him, sounding sort of embarrassed, if I had had a baby recently. I think they mostly knew I hadn't, but she was just too convincing.

The funny thing is that soon after this, I DID get pregnant with her little brother.

DS7 is definitely in this category and yes, it can be exhausting and frustrating. Even at 7 it is sometimes hard to tell what really happened (say at school that day) and what is a tale he is spinning. I spent some time being concerned that he couldn't tell the difference between reality and fantasy, but now I'm pretty sure he can, he's just messing with me. Yesterday, he absolutely insisted (to the point of tears) that he was not allowed to eat lunch at school. Everyone else ate lunch but he was not. While this would have explained his incredible grumpiness after school, I am fairly certain that the teacher did not starve him. It wasn't until I told him that I would have to call the teacher and principal because I can't allow them to mistreat my child by refusing him lunch that he backed off on the story.

Yes, exhausting!