Jenny

Hunter has always had a vivid imagination.  I love this about him.  One of my favorite things to do is to stand outside his door and listen to him play.  The dialogue that he creates is wildly imaginative and often hysterical. 

Recently I've started to notice that Hunter talks a lot about someone named Jenny during his play time.  At first I thought he must have a new kid in his class at school, and he was just pretending like he was playing with her in his room, but whenever I'd ask about kids at school, Jenny's name would never come up.  So after some eavesdropping loving parent observation during playtime and some probing, I've come to realize that Jenny is not a classmate of Hunter's, but his imaginary friend.  Oh, and Jenny's a boy...told you he had a vivid imagination.

I have mixed feelings about Jenny.  I think imaginary friends are kind of cute, but the extremist in me is tempted to google early signs of Schizophrenia online so I can see if there's a link between the two.  It just kind of creeps me out to think that he has a friend that he plays with and talks to (and according to Katie, often yells at in the morning while he's playing in his room alone).  So my plan for now is to ignore Jenny's existence and hope that he goes away...and hope that we're not in for years of mishaps at the hands of Drop Dead Fred....er, I mean Jenny.

For now, I'm thankful for the real friendships that Hunter has...

Here's to fostering relationships with actual, living humans.  That's my parenting mantra for the week...human friends are good.  Let's have more of them.