Children with Imaginary Friends Develop To Adults with Enthusiasm for ‘Fantasy Activities’

Among the various stages of human development, childhood is the most distinct and abundant stage which is filled with cognitive, emotional and many physical changes. This is the stage in life when the human life, its innocence its wonders and its imaginations are flourishing thus making the stage very delicate. Many of the things that are learned at this stage are the ones that shape the type of an individual that one will become and the life path that one will follow. This can hence be described to be the most important stage in human life, since it is what literary determines the afterlife of that individual. Imaginary friends is an important element in the course of a child development, most people while at this is stage develop an imaginary friend whom they spend time with. Having these imaginary friends shapes the kind of an individual that the child becomes, with most of them having a special liking for fantasy activities and the imagination world a good illustration being the fiction writers.

The play stage in childhood is an important stage in life that must be passed in order for an individual to reach full development. This is that stage in a child’s life when she or he learns to role play and this means taking the identities of other people and pretending to be them. This a development stage that allows the children to assume the role of another individual and assume them as their own, trying to assume and foresee what that person that she is impersonating would do in various situations that she or he is faced with (Trionfi & Elaine, p. 1). During this stage, there are very many development activities that happen and one of them includes acquirement of abilities, development of understanding of roles, the capability to assume the status of other people, the sharpened sense of an individual as an entity and the ability to establish boundaries within that role. This can be defined as the development stage when the child discovers and expands insights of themselves and the other people around them. During this time, the child can learn and also increase their understanding of the entire universe and this includes themselves.

This development of a generalized other and the obtainance of a sense of roles and boundaries is something that is very important in helping the child to become an individual that is important in the society. Children do not always follow the presumed rules of socialization, asserting one’s autonomy is one way of establishing their independence and separation from the others. This is where the imaginary friends become important components in serving this role. The imaginary friends can be described to be a good example of a private act of fantasy that is controlled by the child on its own (Taylor, p. 5). The imaginary friend just as the name suggests is an imagination, so this is not an individual that can be seen or touched, it belongs solely to the owner because this is their fantasy. The imaginary friends are important elements of development for a child in that it helps in creating the feelings of importance, confidence, power and this could also lead to a greater acceptance of self by the child. The imaginary friend can best be described as the first action of independence that separates the child from the mother or its primary care taker.

Children with the imaginary friends are more confident as opposed to the ones without and they hence gets to be bosses, they can direct their activities as well as direct and dictate their communication with other people. Having an imaginary friend for the child opens up the element of the imaginary dialogue, the child has to often communicate which greatly helps in improving her dialogue as well as her communication skills (Trionfi & Elaine, p. 2). This frequent communication between the child and the friend can also best be described as decontextualization, whereby the child is forced to come up with various real life roles that she or he has to play with her imagined friend.  This makes them better individuals because their social interaction skills are better as compared to the ones that do not have imaginative friends. Taylor (p. 9) illustrates that when the children lose their sense of control on the imaginary friends, they disappear. This hence suggests that the interaction with the imaginary friends helps the child to exercise his or her autonomy and develop more individual interaction skills.

Imaginary friends have great effects on the children that have them and also to the adults that had them when they were young. As earlier illustrated, imaginary friends is a world of fantasy. The child creates them, in order to have someone that she or he can play with when they are alone thus commonly acting as a form of comfort (Trionfi & Elaine, p. 1). The creation of the imaginary friend by the child is an evidence of the love for fantasy by that child which is a trait that passed on to his or her adulthood. Most of the children that have imaginary friends grow up to be adults with a liking for fantasy activities that includes watching movies, reading and writing novels among other fantasy activities. As supported by the study of, most the writers that are there today are people that had an imaginary friend when they were children and a percentage of them still have these imaginary friends (Taylor et al., p. 17).

Fiction writing is based on imagination, everything that the writer comes up with is a few concepts that no other person have created. Though the themes of their work may be motivated by things happening around them, the direction and plot that the story takes is all based on the imagination of the writer. These fiction works often include fantasy relationships which is why they mostly attract people that most likely had imaginary friends when they were young. The adults do not have the luxury of having imaginary friends because of the perception that the society has on the issue. Having imaginary friends as an adult is always associated with mental illness and so most people will try to avoid such contacts (Taylor, p. 6 ). Because of this, most of the people that love engaging in fantasy activities hence seek comfort in watching movies, reading and writing of novels.

Their love for imagination is something that cannot be satisfied through creation of their own play characters like they did as children because they are afraid that they may get labelled as people with mental illness.  They hence enjoy this creativity through creation of their own characters in their fiction works, where they have the power to create any form of character that they like without any judgements from the society. Others enjoy the concept of imaginations through reading, watching and engaging in many other activities that have been created through imagination.

 In the films, other people take the various roles and they have to change their own character to take on the new character in the film and this is what involves role playing. This love for fantasy by the adults can also be referenced as a strategy of helping them deal with chaotic and difficult life situations. The fantasy activities provides a sense of comfort for these individual ad it generally helps them forget their problems for a while as they become engaged in the imaginative world. This is where the concept of illusion of independent agency (IIA) comes in. when people start watching film or reading a book, they get s engaged into the events of these works that they forget everything that is happening around them (Taylor et al., p. 13). The fictional writers are always so engaged in their work as they create their own imaginative world, that they forget everything else in their world which is the same thing that happens with children when they are role playing with their imaginative friends. Basically every fantasy activity can be described as an unconscious experience that shifts an individual from the real world to the fantasy world (Taylor et al., p. 14).

Everyone that is attracted to the imaginative world is someone whose love for imagination started out when they were young. This means that these are people who had imaginative friends when they were young. An imaginative friend is someone as earlier indicated that is created by the child with her own creativity to make her world fun and interesting. When these children grow up, their skills of creativity are still very valid and most of them choose to explore it through the world of fiction, employing every element that they learnt. These are the people that choose to get engaged in occupations that involves imaginations and this includes, writing, film careers and many other careers that involve the creation of imaginative characters. Their experiences as children with the imaginative friends and the skills that they learn, sets a path for them where they explore imagination at another greater level.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works cited

Taylor, Marjorie. Chapter 7: ‘Do Oldre Children and Adults Create Imaginary Companions?’

Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them. New York: Oxford UP, 1999

Taylor, Marjolie, Sara D. Hodges and Adele Kohanyi. ‘The Illusion of Independent Agency:

Do Adult Fiction Writers Experience their characters as Having Minds of Their Own?’ Imagination, Cognition And Personality, Vol. 22(4): 2002-2003.

Trionfi, Gabriel and Elaine Reese. ‘A good Story: Children With Imaginary Companions

Create Richer Narrative.’’ Child Development. Volume 80, Number 4: July/August 2009.