Does your kid have an imaginary friend?

My 2 1/2 tear old has an alligator living under her bed, a witch that visits occasionally, a giant living outside our window, and she is visited regularly by Barney, the purple dinosaur. Sometimes, I have to ,“be quiet, because the witch is sleeping.”

Perfectly normal.

They very much tend to show up at times of undesired activities or when they do something forbidden :)

How long you’ll have to put up with them is really a very individual thing depending on the child’s development. Important is not to reject these notions and plays in a strong-arm manner.

Rather, go with it, if your child doesn’t want to come to the dinner table because of Anakin, tell him/her that Anakin is eating now as well. Make it work for you, and y’all will be happy.

(Even Lego Jedi have to sleep :)

So far Anakin hasn’t been blamed for anything or used as an excuse—I actually think the whole thing is pretty funny. My two older kids never had an imaginary friend. It will be interesting to see what happens when my son takes Lego Anakin to preschool today!

I have an imaginary friend. But he thinks I’m crazy.

I am an imaginary friend ;(

You needn’t worry about Lego® Anakin. We’ve had him over and he’s been well behaved. Duplo® Anakin, on the other hand… Nothing but trouble.

Also look out for Lego® Chewbacca. He ate one of our cats.

My daughters too small and I hope she doesn’t have one in the future because that’s creepy but my mom told me I had one but he was demonic so she says. Haha

My 4-year-old also has imaginary friends. Perfectly normal for her age I think.

I know it’s normal—I had an imaginary friend when I was a kid. I guess I’ve always thought imaginary friends were usually invented when a kid didn’t have other kids around to play with. We have three kids, and my son also has friends from preschool. Then again, Anakin could be around just because of an obsession with both Legos and Star Wars. As long as he doesn’t find my chocolate stash, I guess he can stick around.

Unfortunately, my son sometimes has an imaginary friend, a small boy named Jason who tells him to kill himself or others. Whenever Jason pops up it is a sign that my son is hallucinating again and needs to go to the hospital.

He has been diagnosed as bipolar (and some docs insist he is schizoaffective) and he is 14, so no longer of an age where imaginary friends are part of normal development.

It is so healthy to have imaginary friends and imaginary worlds at his age. (keep an eye out on it though, this imaginary friend is likely a part of normal development but sometimes imaginary friends serve a purpose and if so you will slowly become aware of that purpose, for example sometimes the exist to beat up bullies). It is a sign of an active imagination and actually is a sign of good brain growth. In fact adults who have had imaginary friends as children typically end up being vary successful. Many becoming writers. Stephen King and JRR Tolkien are both reported to have had imaginary worlds and/or friends as children.

In your shoes I’d work with. For Example: Mr Anaken has the same rules as your son and thus cannot be rude or too demanding.

Editing to add: Now I see (after reading through the responses) you aren’t really worried about it and find it cute. So do I, lol.

Aren’t all the other flutherfolk our imaginary friends?

When I was small the only friends I had were both imaginary, and they’d only play with each other.

@AstroChuck that gave me a good laugh

Hmmm… Not that I’m aware of. But, then we had horses, cattle, dogs, cats and I believe a couple of rabbits. I don’t think my daughter had time for imaginary friend(s). She was too busy for them. I’ll have to ask her!

Maybe there some kind of natural connection between kids and star wars, but i used to have one strongly based on Luke Skywalker, he wore the strange robe/suit thing and everything… (if that’s the right guy ive got)