He'll work out emotional issues as he re-plays scenarios that involve feeling sad, happy, frightened, or safe. He also develops his understanding of cause and effect as he imagines how a frog or a dog would behave in a particular situation. Perhaps most important, creating imaginary situations and following them through to a conclusion teaches your child to think creatively and solve problems. A new study conducted at Case Western Reserve University backs this up. Not only did children who were imaginative when they were young tend to keep this quality as they got older, researchers found, but they became better problem-solvers as well.
Imagination is a messy business, there's no doubt about it.
And psychologists agree that while imaginary friends are fine, if your child starts blaming the friend for something she did, it's time for a reality check. But if and when you can, let your toddler live for a bit with the reminders of her flight of fancy. The fact that the dining room table isn't available for dinner because it's currently serving as an igloo gives you the perfect excuse to have a pretend picnic on the living room floor. And we worry about what others think, therefore we feel emotions such as embarrassment. But they do tend to work against a free-floating imaginative life.