Imaginary Friends - Freddie

Children can be pretty strange. I'm sure you all have stories of weird and whacky things that your little's darlings have said, or done, or do on a regular basis.

For me, nothing beats my daughters friendship with Freddie.

Freddie is imaginary, or at least I hope so, or there's something real freaky going on around here.

One night as I'm putting the kids to bed, my not at all sinister daughter turned to me and said,

"Mummy, I have a friend. He's called Freddie. Freddie is a ghost. He doesn't live here, but he has to stay with us because all of his family are dead. If we move he will follow us where ever we go"

OH MY GOD I wanted to cry, what an awful thing to say. Where did she get this story from, are we being haunted by a child whose family are all dead, oh god get me out of here! I'm a real scaredy cat, and you can call me crazy but I watch way too many ghosty movies and often convince myself that there's something in the house with me. So, when little sinister sally comes out with that, well, I was almost tipped over the edge.

For the next few days, Caitlin included Freddie in a lot of her games, and I cowered in the corner forced myself to include this strange character in our activities, he was a friend of the family, after all.

After a few days, we worked out that Freddie was a girl, despite the fact that Caitlin calls her a 'he'. She calls everyone a he, regardless of gender, but I assumed Freddie was more of a boys name than a girls name, and so never questioned it. Caitlin gave me a sharp telling off for calling Freddie a boy. As if she would ever be friends with a boy!

One afternoon we were playing, and Caitlin said "Mum look at Freddie's tail"

I told her that people don't have tails, and she laughed and said "Umm, Mum, Freddie's a lizard".
She actually said it as if I was totally stupid for not knowing.

Thank goodness we weren't being haunted by some sinister child spirit. I mean, I obviously knew that all along, I wasn't really scared, honestly.

Imaginary Friend

So there you go, my daughters imaginary friend is a ghost of a multi coloured lady lizard with a boys name. According to Caitlin, Freddie is 5 years old and has children of her own. Caitlin and Freddie are very good friends, and she is involved in almost everything we do.
She particularly likes telling Freddie off for doing naughty things, or pretending that Freddie is sick so she can take care of her.

While I find it totally bizarre that her friend is of the reptile species, I don't discourage the friendship in any way. I think it's great, and it shows she has a healthy imagination.

Do your children have any strange invisible friends? Or perhaps you had one as a child? How do you feel about imaginary friends? I'd love to hear your stories!

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13 comments:

  1. Not sure if it's appropriate, but this did make me laugh out loud - I can just imagine your relief at finding out she's a reptile!! My girl has a soft toy turtle called Terry that goes everywhere with her.... Terry is a girl, which she reminds us every day when we say 'he' (why can't we just get that into our heads, I don't know!!)

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    1. I did have to laugh myself, actually reading over it. It sounds so absurd that I could believe we were being haunted. Yes, how could we not know that Terry's and Freddie's are girls!?

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  2. My oldest had "Sinkion and Sankion, my ghost and my monster". I can still hear him saying it and he's 20. They lasted about 18 months and were never any bother. They never needed anything, they were just around :D

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    1. Haha that has a strange ring to it! Why are imaginary friends often of the ghost or monster kind?

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  3. aaawww that is so sweet, none of my children have had imaginary friends #MMWBH x

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    1. .....yet! Haha thanks for stopping by #mmwbh

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  4. Oh bless her, that's so funny - I would have been scared of a dead child called Freddie too, a lizard is a lot less worrying lol!

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    1. Yes a lizard is not quite the horror I was imagining!

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  5. My two girls have had imaginary friends for a long time...you'll be pleased to know that they moved house with us too and there were no mishaps, in fact they like the new house. Stars friend is Dog (who is actually a dog!) Boo has two friends, a girl called Anna, and boy called Chalk. Even though they have been around for years I still find it a little weird when I catch the girls talking to them.
    If I had an imaginary friend I would have a lizard, a really good spider eating lizard ;)
    #PoCoLo

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  6. My eldest son had an imaginary friend when he was little too. A boy called Thomas. Was a little creepy, but we had to go along with it. A multi-colored lizard seems to be a SUPER COOL kind of imaginary friend though! #PoCoLo

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  7. This is SO lovely. Grace had 3 imaginary friends. She started off with a friend called Diblin and then Bertie and Violet joined in too. A couple of years ago she said that they were off to 'anniversary' (university!) and then they seemed to sort of disappear but they are occasionally mentioned still. I positively embraced it. I thought it was cute. Thank you for linking to PoCoLo :) x

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  8. I did have a giggle at this, we have thus far avoided imaginary friends here but a lizard is so cool x #pocolo

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