Jean Elliott doesn’t recall exactly when Ricky came into her life. She just remembers that when she was 4 or 5 years old, he was always there when she needed him.
“He was my buddy,” says Elliott, now the public relations coordinator in the College of Human Resources and Education at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Va. “He went everywhere I went. He was sort of a protector. He made me feel comfortable.”
To little Jean, Ricky was the perfect childhood companion.
He may have been something less in her parents’ eyes — if they could have seen him. Ricky was Jean’s imaginary friend.
“It caused them some mild distress,” Elliott says, laughing. “Here was their youngest child with a little friend they couldn’t see.”
Elliott remembers Ricky as small, about 3 feet tall, and says he looked a little like Pinocchio. She’d open the car door for him and let him get in first when the family was going for a drive — no wonder her parents were slightly put off — and he’d accompany her when she went to play in the dark and at times scary family basement, with its noisy old oil furnace and gurgling sump pump.
“I just remember opening the basement door and Ricky going down the stairs first. Then when it was OK, I’d go down there,” she says. “I wouldn’t play games with him. He’d just be hanging out, sitting on the stairs, watching while I played in the basement.”
Children’s worlds are apparently full of characters like Ricky. Experts may disagree exactly how common these make-believe friends are, but they do agree that they’re all over the place.
“It’s definitely more common than most people believe,” says Marjorie Taylor, a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon. Taylor has been studying the phenomenon for 10 years. She has interviewed about 175 children, 100 of them three times over four years, as well as 400 adults, all of whom had imaginary friends. Her research has resulted in a book on the subject, “Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them” (Oxford University Press, $25).
Exactly how common depends on the type of play you include in your definition. Some people consider only the invisible kind of imaginary friend. Some, like Taylor, include special stuffed animals, ones that a child talks to and listens to and treats as a friend, not as a comfort object.
“If you include special stuffed animals, it’s 60 to 65 percent of children who have imaginary friends at one time or another,” she says. “And it’s 40 percent without the stuffed animals. So even if you don’t include animals, lots of children are creating invisible friends they react with.”
Some experts take the more narrow view, distinguishing between an imaginary companion and an inanimate object that a child brings to life.
“When I think of an imaginary friend, I think of that Jimmy Stewart movie `Harvey,’ ” says Karen Owens, referring to the 1950 film in which Stewart’s close friend is an invisible 6-foot-3-inch rabbit. “It’s something no one else can see; it’s almost real.”
Owens, an adjunct faculty member at Barat College and the author of three college texts on child psychology, believes the number of children with such friends to be much lower. She considers having a stuffed animal or toy or other object come alive as another phenomenon, called animism.
“That’s a common thing for children,” she says. “The kid feels lonely and upset and grabs a blanket and then feels better. So then the blanket gives them a feeling of comfort and security. Then it’s a simple step to having the blanket come alive.”
But whether it’s 60 percent or 40 percent or less, that’s still a large number of the young population.
But why? Are they, as in Owens’ example, trying to cope with personal issues? Is an imaginary friend a manifestation of a child’s creativity or of his or her vibrant imagination? Or is it just part of growing up? The answer may be all of the above.
“If a child feels lonely or in need of more support, having an imaginary friend is a way of dealing with those emotions,” says Linda Rubinowitz, director of graduate education at The Family Institute at Northwestern University and a therapist and consultant for 17 years.
“Here’s one story I know: A woman was taking her 4-year-old to the park to play on the teeter-totter. And the daughter kept sitting farther back than the mother thought was reasonable. It turned out she was making a little extra room for her imaginary friend. She needed extra courage. The imaginary friend helped her have that courage.”
“I see (an imaginary friend) as children using their imagination to cope with all sorts of things,” Taylor says. “They tend to serve lots of purposes. They entertain and comfort and they also can give you a sense of how to work through things you’re afraid of.”
It’s also too simple to chalk imaginary friends up to creativity, she says, despite recent studies in Mexico that may indicate a link.
“You might think these kids would stand out as being creative, but there are many ways to express creativity,” Taylor says. “This is just one way. Creative kids don’t have to have an imaginary friend.”
“It’s definitely a more imaginative child,” Rubinowitz says, “one whose thinking has gone to a more complex level. They’re exploring themselves, their emotions.”
With all these little friends around, you’d think parents would be stumbling across them constantly. Not so.
“It’s really interesting,” Rubinowitz says. “It’s reported in the literature as very common in the ages of 3 to 6. But as a clinical psychologist, I haven’t seen it much. Parents don’t necessarily report it very often. I think it’s because children use imaginary friends in a private way, to explore themselves. So parents don’t always know.”
Taylor lists a number of reasons why parents are in the dark. “One is that children will sometimes talk about an imaginary friend in passing like they talk about other friends or children they see at school,” she says. “Parents don’t know every child their kid is interacting with. This happened with my own daughter. She mentioned Michael Rose (her imaginary friend). I thought it was someone at day care.
“Other times (parents) don’t ask about it. They know their child is talking to someone who is invisible, but they don’t want to ask the child for fear of encouraging the child. So they don’t know the details.
“Then as the child gets older, there’s definitely a privacy issue. We’ve had 7-year-old children (in her studies) tell us about their imaginary friends, then ask us not to tell their parents.”
In the past, imaginary friends were associated with children who had few real friends. But that’s not the case.
“It’s true that many children create imaginary friends in a period of their life when they have fewer social contacts — they may be a first born or an only child or just moved to a new town,” Taylor says. “But that’s just one reason. They have all kinds of purposes. Children who have imaginary friends also have real friends. They’re not a substitute for real friends.”
A case in point: Jim Winterer and Tripper. Winterer, now the news service director at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, grew up in the early ’50s in St. Paul, one of 10 children. The family lived in a neighborhood where “every other house had 8 or 10 kids.” Even with all those real siblings and friends, Winterer found time for Tripper, a fictional horse with whom he galloped around the neighborhood.
As Winterer’s tale shows, not all purely imaginary friends are little male or female playmates.
“I’m still learning about new ones all the time,” Taylor says. “I just learned about one that lives in a child’s hair. And it has an imaginary wife named Mrs. Duck. They’re so diverse in size, in shape, where they live, the relationship a child has with them, whether they’re a boy, a girl, a woman, a man or something altogether different. They may not even be a human being. Some are ghosts. They’re all over the map.
“Some are constantly morphing. Sometimes the same friend will be a dog, sometimes it’ll be an eagle. Others are much more well defined. She has red hair, freckles, wears a dress with a certain pattern. It varies from child to child how much they change.
“When I started studying them, I wondered, how can I describe this? But there is no typical imaginary friend. They are so very different that that’s the phenomenon. It took me a while to figure that out.”
The life expectancy for imaginary friends varies. Some arrive on the scene when the child is as young as 2. The most common age for a child to have one is around 4, and they usually fade when the child is 6 or 7, though some studies have found 12-year-olds with them.
“You know what great imaginations children have,” Owens says. “These are absolutely wonderful years in terms of imagination.”
But when children are around 7, Owens says, “this is where they lose that great fantasy world and jump into the real world. They stop believing in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy. They really make that transitional leap at 6 or 7.”
Elliott’s friend Ricky disappeared when she started going to school. Tripper vanished from Winterer’s life shortly after Winterer’s older sister tripped over Tripper’s bridle — a rope that Winterer had left stretched across the front steps — and fell and knocked out two teeth. (“After that, I didn’t bring him up much.”)
Still, some imaginary friends may stay with a person well into adulthood. To ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, Charlie McCarthy was very much like an imaginary friend. He didn’t feel like he was putting words in the dummy’s mouth, Taylor says, he felt like he was hearing Charlie talk.
Mexican artist Frida Kahlo told of her painting “Two Fridas” being inspired by her imaginary friend. And when singer Kurt Cobain killed himself in 1994, he left behind a suicide note addressed to Boddah, identified by Cobain’s family as his imaginary friend from childhood.
By and large, though, when a child works through whatever first caused them to invent their friend, that friend will vanish.
Michelle Peranteau, who works for a Philadelphia public relations agency, had Arthuld, “the boy version of me,” who appeared on the scene shortly after her baby brother was born.
About a year and a half or two years later, little Michelle announced that Arthuld (“I have no clue where that name came from.”) had died. Her mother called the family pediatrician to find out what Arthuld’s demise might mean.
“The pediatrician said it was probably because I was comfortable with my brother. He apparently was not a welcome addition in my eyes. I was an attention hog, as my mother puts it.”
Many times, not only does the companion vanish, but so does the entire memory of the friend.
“Children forget them right away,” Taylor says. “A child will tell us all about Tippy and Tommy at age 4, and at 7 they don’t recall them. When they’re done with them, they move on.”
IMAGINARY FRIENDS CAN REVEAL WHAT’S GOING ON IN A CHILD’S WORLD
While they’re around, leading children into basements, galloping around the house or engaging 5-year-olds in conversation, imaginary companions can worry parents.
Is there something a parent can or should do? Ban them from visiting? Sit back and enjoy the show? Or clench one’s teeth and wait for them to go away?
“They should recognize the beauty of this fantasy world,” says Karen Owens, author of three books on childhood psychology. “Wouldn’t you like to recapture those feelings in your adult life? To me it’s such a wonderful time. Maybe parents should vicariously experience their children’s joy.”
“Parents often worry when they find out their child has an imaginary friend. They shouldn’t,” writes Georgia Witkin, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York, in her book, “KidStress” (Viking). “Imaginary friends can be one of kids’ favorite and most effective stress-coping strategies. Instead of discouraging it, take notes.”
Marjorie Taylor, who had studied children’s imaginary friends for 10 years, agrees that parents can learn something from their child’s fictional companion.
“Parents can use imaginary friends to find out what is going on in a child’s life,” she says. “If a child doesn’t like going to school, ask. Maybe the child will tell you, `Blah-Blah is having a hard time at recess and doesn’t like to go to school.’ It’s the child who is having the problem.”
One thing parents shouldn’t do is brand a child a liar for his or her adventures with an imaginary companion. And the occasional childhood misstep that gets blamed on an imaginary friend shouldn’t alarm parents either.
“They’re shifting blame,” Owens says. ” `I didn’t eat the cookie, Ralph ate it.’ A lot of parents get a little concerned. But this kind of lying — that seems like a harsh term — is relatively common and harmless in young children. So the same thing is kind of applicable with `Ralph ate the cookie.’ “
As Taylor reiterates, imaginary friends really do serve a purpose and prepare a child for later life.
“Children are helpless in many ways; they’re small, they’re not real strong, they’re dependent on others,” she says. “But this is something that they can do if they are sad or bored–use their imaginations.
“And your imagination is something that’s with you all your life.”
