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During last July’s 5.8 earthquake, 3-year-old Bronwyn told her 1-year-old sister, “We’re going for a wiggle.” READ MORE
Early Years
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We thought of ourselves as a family of three. Then, along came Chow-Chow. Or is it Ciao-Ciao, the Italian Imaginary Friend? First his name was a popular phrase that surfaced in the syllabic sing-songy froth of toddler babble. We thought Chow-Chow might reference some kind of foodstuff, a nickname for, say cereal or food in general, as in “Let’s eat some chow” or “Chow! Chow!” Then, while on vacation, we observed that Chow-Chow seemed to be following us. Our boy pointed to his tiny automobile clip-on rear view mirror. Behind us, on a motorcycle. Making noise, like a Harley. Brrrrrrrrooooom. Wearing a helmet. Further biographical details followed. Chow-Chow was, according to our story teller, 5 or 6 years old. He could travel underwater. He seemed to associate with Little Toot, the famous tugboat and a certain plastic bald eagle (where do we get these odd toys, anyway?) who resides in the deep end of the bathtub. No, we’ve never actually laid eyes on Chow-Chow, instead growing to know him well enough through what our young son tells us. Chow-Chow is a kind of disembodied soul alternately living on the ceiling of our home (one of our son’s first almost-sentences: “Chow-Chow up there!”) or cruising, fully embodied, alongside our minivan on his loud, slobbery motorcycle. Lately he’s been making appearances in the bathtub again. Personally, I imagine Chow-Chow as sort of a cross between Doonesbury’s B.D. (back in his obsessive helmet-wearing days) and Jack Nicholson’s character in “Easy Rider.” A cartoon outlaw of sorts. Of course, it’s not about me and my imaginings, it’s about my son’s. The experts say it’s common for parents to feel a little pushed out when their children develop friendships. This must be especially true with friends who aren’t even really there: imaginary friends. As parents of young children, we exercise awesome control over who and what enters their lives food, music, books, film and certainly people - and yet, here comes Chow-Chow, somehow making it past all our security forces and filters or, weirdly, somehow created with our complicity out of the rich garden of conversations, song snippets, jokes, which we have helped sow. Imaginary friends are genuine challenges to our unilateral parental reign and often parents worry about what they indicate: Can the child tell the difference between reality and fantasy? Is the child using the “friend” to manipulate? To hide? To avoid? We feel left out, perhaps. The imaginary playmates are their friends, not ours. We cannot truly enter the world where they reside and for some parents it is as if the first door has shut, years before we imagined it would. In these ways, these “friends” foreshadow those adolescent relationships that will certainly rival ours or seem to. For our young children, these “friends” signal something else: the welcome early evidence of an important milestone. In his classic text, “Touchpoints: Your Child’s Emotional and Behavioral Development,” noted pediatrician Dr. T. Berry Brazelton declares that “a child’s life is enhanced by imaginary friends. These are a sign of healthy emotional and cognitive development among 3- to 6-year-olds.” Experts tend to agree that these “friends” are tools that can allow our children to explore a fantasy world where they have more power than they do in the so-called real world. They can experiment with identity, emotions, behavior. They can try things out in a safe place before - or even as - the world tries the same out on them. So Chow-Chow and his pals are a good thing finally. A healthy thing. A companionable thing. A complex cognitive thing. After all, you can’t have too many friends, even if not everyone can see them. Lisa Alvarez, an English professor at Irvine Valley College, lives in Modjeska Canyon with her husband and 3-year-old son. |
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