Olivers Updates

I have a friend, his name is Bryan, he lives by my green work. He has a little sister just like me. Daily I will tell my mom and dad what he did. Sometimes he slaps me in the face, or says mean things to me and calls me names, he can be quiet the bully! Other times he can be super nice and not such a bad boy. To get to his house you go over the twisty bridge, he sometimes lives in our woods, and often lives far away…truth be told, I’m not sure how to get to his house. My mommy and daddy always want to talk to his mommy about his bad behavior but I always tell them they can’t, that would make him very mad. The other day he couldn’t come to my birthday because he had a needle in his mouth, it went through his tongue and he had to go the hospital. Incase you haven’t figured it out yet, Bryan is my imaginary friend.

*a note from my mom:

• Oliver started telling us about his “green work” and his “workers/co-workers” when he attended Ms. Julia’s
• Bryan came into the picture when he started at Woodinville Children’s Center
• He often tells us about the monsters that cast shadows on his walls at night or the scary cats in his walls with red eyes. He even has told me that scary witches come into his room at night…in fact there was one there when Bruce came over and he was sick once.

* a note about imaginary friends:

Imaginary friends and imaginary companions are a psychological and social phenomenon where a friendship or other interpersonal relationship takes place in the imagination rather than external physical reality. Imaginary friends are fictional characters created for improvisational role-playing. They often have elaborate personalities and behaviors. Although they may seem very real to their creators, children understand that their imaginary friends are not real.

They reveal, according to several theories of psychology, a child’s anxieties, fears, goals and perceptions of the world through that child’s conversations.[citation needed] They are, according to some children, physically indistinguishable from real people, while others say they see their imaginary friends only in their heads, and still others cannot see the friend at all but can sense his/her presence.

It has been theorized that children with imaginary companions may develop language skills and retain knowledge faster than children without them, which may be because these children get more linguistic practice than their peers as a result of carrying out "conversations" with their imaginary friends.

Imaginary companions are an integral part of many children’s lives. They provide comfort in times of stress, companionship when they’re lonely, someone to boss around when they feel powerless, and someone to blame for the broken lamp in the living room. Most important, an imaginary companion is a tool young children use to help them make sense of the adult world.