Posted by Prue Eckett on February 14, 2003 at -1:37:56 from 210.86.79.103 user Prue_Eckett.
In Reply to: the children's imagination posted by Jonathan Labaree on February 12, 2003 at 19:08:58:
Out of interest I asked my daughter this question, remembering her and her friends imaginative games around the ages of 4 to 14 and she certainly agreed.
She reminded me when she and her classmates were doing a unit about Victorian living around the age of nine, their play was all about Victorian school - the cane etc and how things were done during those times.
She also went through a phase of 'things going bump in the night' where her big fears were for some reason, Nazis. I do remember that because of her writing - prolific any way, suddenly became full of escapes and camps and all the other horrors she had found out from a book in the school library. Her teacher at the time mentioned it, mostly because each epic ended with her dying in some horrific detail, but she was quite happy at the time, not depressed even. I suppose she worked through her fears in print.
All the kids, girls and boys (we were close friends with a large family and all the children played together constantly) went through the cowboys & indians, brides, explorers, war, pirates, models, characters from books etc phases plus whatever was current on TV, the younger ones being useful stage props or bodies at appropriate times.