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.

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!