Imaginary Stories

We've recently moved from reading bedtime stories, to telling imaginary stories. As I've said before, I'm a bit lacking in imagination, so this is trickier than it sounds, and at 7:30 at night the thing I'm imagining is sitting with a glass of wine in front of the television, in relative peace, which is not what Holly wants to hear. But I'm happy to give it a go, especially as we avoid the half hour of searching through the book case for today's stories. And I get to determine the length. Also, Holly likes stories to involve a mum, a dad, at least two children and two cats, which doesn't involve a huge amount of imagination. And generally one of them ends up getting a cold, which is her current obsession.

We are very lucky that the children have been pretty healthy to date, hardly even noticing if they catch a cold. Hence Holly has a rosy view of what it might be like to be 'sick'. She told me the other day that it'd would be good to have a cold because you could stay home and watch television all day. I tried to explain the downside, but I guess it's difficult to imagine... So, each night I 'read' the same imaginary stories. There are slight adaptations, and who actually gets the cold varies from person, to cat, to next door neighbour, but a good bout of sneezing somewhere in the middle is important.

We're at the point where I get told who's in the story, and exactly what they do, and I think, 'Hey, whose imagination is this anyway, yours or mine??'. I suggest she tells the story, but that's not the way it goes.

I have tried a bit of teaching through imaginary stories; like the story of the girl whose cat ran away because she pulled its tail to much, or the story of Naughty Nancy and Nice Nancy, but I have to say there's been no positive effect as yet and these are not the stories that get requests or encores every night. After all, the cat didn't sneeze while her tail was being pulled, and both Naughty Nancy and Nice Nancy were perfectly healthy.

The obsession with being sick extends to TV programs, books and games. If an episode of Dora, or Clifford or Special Agent Oso, has someone sneezing in it, it becomes the favourite, and if any of them are actually tucked up in bed, then I've got to record and keep those episodes to be watched over and over. Games of Mum and Dads, or Mums and Dogs generally involves a trip to the doctor or the vet, and if I want to find a book Holly will actively ask for, I just need one character to be feeling a bit out of sorts.

We have recently moved to a more dramatic version of the imaginary story, requiring an ambulance, and occasionally a fire engine, which worries me slightly. I managed to call the fire engine to rescue the cat from a tree, and we went to emergency for a broken arm rather than actually calling the ambulance. I'm reluctant to put my children in danger, even in imaginary stories.

What is it with this obsession with illness and hurt?? I worry that my child will become a rubbernecker, slowing down as she passes an accident, not able to avert her eyes...

The American dictionary definition of rubbernecker is 'to look about or survey with unsophisticated wonderment or curiosity.'

Hey that's not too bad. All 4 year olds are rubberneckers on our world. Curious about what's going on around them, excited by small things we are oblivious to, experiencing things through their imaginations.