Our daughter has a vivid imagination. And for the whole of her life, we have let her run with it wherever she wanted to take it.
When the new mulch outside out front door began sprouting little rings of mushrooms, she decided that there had been a fairy festival. We made up stories for days about how fun it must have been as the rain continued, and new "faerie rings" of mushrooms kept popping up all along the perimeter of our house, culminating in a huge one out front.
Those were some seriously busy fairies, let me tell you.
And, to be honest, we both had a blast making up stories about them for days on end. Especially me, because I got to see the world through the eyes of a child all over again.
Imagination is such a fun thing when you are young and so willing to believe in any magic that might come your way. We truly do try to let her stretch hers as much as possible -- mostly because we both know what happens when you get to be an adult and life beats all the funny little imaginary wishes right out of you.
But at some point, how much of it is helping the imagination and whimsy and magical thinking to thrive? And how much is just outright fibbing to your child?
I struggle with this. Here's a case in point:
When we read The Borrowers as our summer read-out-loud book two years ago, she decided that we had to have some living in our house since it is over 100 years old, so she made little "books" out of construction paper for them and left them out to be retrieved. "The Borrowers" (a/k/a mom in disguised handwriting) nicely left her a note of thanks, spiriting away all the little books from the top of the desk where they'd been placed so carefully by her little hands, and she has been leaving things out for them ever since.
She may not actually fully believe that they live here -- there is a little doubt in there somewhere, I think -- but she wants to convince herself. There have been a couple of other instances of correspondence and trinket-leaving -- including one instance where we had to make tiny cookies out of one whole cookie dough glob so she could make some for "our borrowers" to share, too. (Too cute, right?!?)
But by aiding and abetting by perpetuating the myth, am I helping her have some serious fun or hurting her in the long run somehow? Because she often talks about this as though it is real with the other kids at school and in the neighborhood, most of whom are old beyond their years and well past jaded by now, and awfully skeptical and scornful of what she is saying.
I want her to have a magical childhood. What parent doesn't want that for their child, really?
But at the same time, I have begun to doubt my own role in making the magic happen. She still believes in Santa, although doubt has begun to creep in there as well. I've begun praying that we make it through just one more untainted, magical little Christmas morning before we get peppered with all the doubting questions...but this year, I'm not willing to bet on it.
And I worry about the social stigma of being the kid who still believes in little kid things, even though I'd rather she were that child than the kid who grows up jaded and party-and-popularity-crowd-centric. Really, that worry stems as much from my own childhood of being the odd girl out as anything, but am I somehow harming my own darling daughter with some of this?
Parenting is hard work. Especially when you try to be thoughtful and conscious about it. I fear that we have reached a crossroads on this particular issue, and I'm not certain what fork to take. Thoughts? Or, in all honesty, am I just overthinking this entirely?
(Photo via Mukhrino FS.)
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