 Once upon a time, long ago, there was a child who loved to pretend. She could pretend that her dolls were real people and that when she jumped off her bed she was flying. She would make believe she was a Mommy and pretend she was in charge. She would imagine that she knew things that she didn’t know and play at making up answers to questions that she didn’t understand. She would pretend she knew the future and would speculate about upcoming events. Why, she would imagine monsters in the dark and then run crying, as if they were real.The more she pretended, the better she got at pretending. As she progressed in her skill to make-up an imagined world, she slowly began to believe the things she was pretending. She got so good at imagining, that the world she now saw was actually a mixture of fact and fantasy.Now, the adults in this country loved her ability to pretend, as a matter-of-fact they would encourage her imaginings and told her that she was being creative. Soon, when she was asked questions, she would simply answer by pretending she knew and then just call it her opinion (she had always been told her opinions were important). She got so good at the skill of pretending, that she began to believe that her opinions were actually facts! She would even imagine that when her parents asked her to do something, she knew better and would simply say the opposite. Well as you can imagine, this led to some mighty interesting conflicts.But the adults around her valued their opinions and their imaginings, so they never taught her any great distinction between fact and fiction in everyday life. They would simply look at each other and say, “Oh, that’s just how children are.” Or, if their child was having some difficulty with telling them what was fact and what was not, they would say, “Oh, that’s just a phase that all kids go through.”Well, this child grew up and became an adult who imagined that her opinion was almost always the right one. As an adult, she had forgotten long ago about her skill to pretend, and would use pretending with other adults. Why, she would act like she could see the future or pretend to understand things that she really didn’t. She actually imagined that opinions were facts and facts were opinions and would share this approach with everyone who would listen.Then she became a parent and didn’t teach her little ones how to see what the facts are and how to make a distinction between fact + fiction, between opinion + fact and between imagination + verifiable information. When she would get into conflicts with her little ones, (because they imagined themselves to be in charge), she would simply think to herself, “Oh, that’s just a phase that all kids go through.”all content The New Parent © 2007
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