My four-year-old has the most amazing toy box filled to the brim with every plaything a little boy could heart. Blocks, games, cars, trains, puzzles … just to name a few.
But, these toys aren’t his favourites.
No, my little man loves his colourful assortment of dress-up clothes that usually line the floor of his room and the rest of our house because his favourite thing to do is to dress-up. I’ve never seen one of my children quite use their imagination like he does. He recreates epic battles with his sword and shield, fights off Darth Vader with his light saber and Jedi costume, creeps around the house like a spider, barks when dressed in his puppy costume or kills the bad guys when he’s a cowboy. He really gets in to the character of whomever he’s dressed up as …so much so that I have to call him by their name. Who knows? Maybe I have a future thespian on my hands.
Sadly, his toy box and dress-up clothes are stuck in limbo back in Florida so he’s been putting his fantastic imagination to use.
And, it amazes me how he does this.
How he sees the world … his world. How he can look at your every day inanimate object, bring it to life and turn it in to something … incredible. He can take any household item, piece of clothing, climbing frame, path, wall, chair, rock, pebble, stick … you name it … and use it as an opportunity for his imagination to soar and play.
I was just never like that as a kid … I think I was far too practical. Of course, like every child I did play and dance and spend enough time in my own imaginary world … *ahem, no comments from the peanut gallery please* … but not quite in the same way that he does.
Take for example, the other night when my friend was over visiting. He was wearing one of my scarves on his head, my kitchen sink rubber gloves and had a plastic clothes hanger in hand. When she asked him what he was doing, he replied rather self-assured that he was a hunter.
Or, how he’s become a little obsessed with the movie Tangled, so much so that we had to make him his very own tower out of an assortment of cardboard boxes that my new bedroom furniture arrived in and now he’s pretending to be Flynn Rider whenever the moment strikes him …
Or, how when I left him alone with said boxes and polystyrene for a few minutes only to come back in to the front room and find piles of white stuff everywhere because he’d been cooking.
Or, how he came downstairs dressed like this morning …
When I asked him if he was a gangsta or a rapper or both, he told me no … doh, he was Justin Bieber and burst into song … baby, baby, baby, oooooh.
Yeah, my little man has role-playing down to a fine art. I just hope that playful side of him never changes.
Tags: imagination, kids, parenting, play
I think this will be fabulous for his future as a play-write?
I think that it’s fantastic! I love how children have such wonderful imaginations (she says as Baby Boy is making the dining table in to a den and the chairs into a car).
haha, what a dude!
brilliant. worth a bloggy-pic each time he appears in a new costume
Haha he’s cute!