Imaginary Objects
My kids were watching a Dora The Explorer video this evening. Dora is one of those shows that encourages the audience to yell at the screen. “Where is my star?” asks Dora confusedly with the star sitting next to her foot “Can you tell me where it is?” Then she pauses to give kids a chance to yell at the screen before discovering that her star is in fact right there. My kids eat this up. They love it. They were happily watching and shouting through two episodes. Amusingly Kiki, who is 10, was the loudest shouter. Isn’t 10 the age when kids are supposed to decide this kind of show is stupid?
Then the shouting turned angry.
Kiki: “I got the wish!”
Gleek: “I got the wish!”
K: “No! I did!”
G: “No! I did!”
K: “Me!”
G: “Me!” It repeated with increased volume until I came up the stairs to play mediator. It turns out that at the end of the program Dora tossed a wish out for the audience to catch. My 10 year old and my 4 year old were arguing over who had caught this wish. I laughed and asked “Could you find something even sillier to argue about?” Kiki and Gleek grinned sheepishly. No, they didn’t think they could find anything sillier. Problem resolved I turned to head back downstairs.
G: “I caught the wish!”
K: “No I did!”
Hmm. Obviously the fight would continue unless I mediated further. Usually when there is contention over a toy and no clear rightful ownership, I confiscate the toy. So I marched up to Kiki and demanded that she hand over the wish. She reached into her pocket, pulled out an imaginary wish, and placed it into my hand. I repeated the process with Gleek. I then announced that the wishes were going to jail and they needed to find something else to play. I found that after carrying these wishes downstairs in my hand I had to throw them in the direction of the jail box before I could be done with them. How do kids make imaginary objects so real?
Later this evening Gleek put on her thinking cap to assist with her reading. This was a detailed process of setting the cap on her head, twisting something near her temple, and then tapping her temples with her index fingers while squinting her eyes. It was definitely a very thinking face. She gave me a long explanation that the twisting was what sorted her thoughts and lined them up. Then she could see what she needed. When we were done reading she carefully took off the cap and placed it on the shelf. “I just can’t sleep with it.” She informed me with a charming sideways tilt to her head as if this fact were obvious. I suppose not. No one wants to be too thinky when they’re trying to sleep.
Through the years we’ve had a pocket sized imaginary friend named Louie, a magic washing machine, a myriad of imaginary animals, and lost “hugs” that we needed to search all over the house to find. It might seem that finding a lost imaginary object would be easy, but no, the kids delight in making grown-ups search all over. They definitely see things that I don’t. I can remember doing that. I remember pretending so strongly that I could see/feel/hear everything I was pretending. Sometimes if I’m not paying attention I can still do it. I think that unselfconsciousness is the key. Or at least a key. Roleplaying provides a venue for this sort of thing as does acting. I don’t have much time for roleplaying or acting in adult forms. So I guess I’ll just stick to confiscation of contentious wishes.