Naughty imaginary friends

R has had imaginary friends for a fair while now. Initially they were just part of her verbal repertoire in pretend phone calls to them and make believe play so it was fine. Specially as she makes up words anyway so her troupe of Bouse, Pouse the Grabbies and Pample etc all seemed to extend from that.

But lately one particular friend called 'Pample'  has been a bad influence and R says Pample made me do it, Pample said I could etc. several times a day. I'm not sure whether it's a reaction because of my attention being taken from her as L wants constant feeding at the moment, or whether this is a usual stage imaginary friends go through?

Has anyone had an imaginary friend befriend their child and become a bad influence? Or any ideas re how to deal with non-existent trouble makers who seem real for their creator?

Oh yes, except we have naughty imaginary pets!

Izzy has Pinky, the pink rabbit - she's the naugtiest of all. She runs away from the dinner table, climbs on things she shouldn't and is mean to the other pets. Izzy loves telling tales on her and telling her off.

Pinky's Mummy, she can be naughty too but most of the time she's just there when Pinky is lonely.

Baby Bird - little boy bird who is nicely behaved but suffers at the hands of Pinky. We enjoy telling Baby Bird how good he's being.

Tinkberbell the puppy - not as frequent as the others, but pops up mostly when we're outdoors or we've sent Pinky to sit in the naughty corner.

When Pinky is naughty, we tell her off just like we would another child so that Izzy doesn't use her as an excuse to misbehave! If Izzy claims that Pinky made her do it, we tell her that it's not a good enough excuse and that just because Pinky is naughty doesn't mean she should be too.

Imaginary pets sound like fun - at least there's less cat fur in the house!

Good idea re pretending to tell off the imaginary offender. Might give that a go - thus far we've been lenient and just said that Pample is rude, doesn't have nice manners etc but it doesn't seem to have much of an effect on him... might try sending him home (he has his own house) if he reoffends.

We're thinking of having a naughty imaginary friend at work. I work in IT and it means that we blame any errors or bugs on them!

Sugarmouse:

I'm not sure whether it's a reaction because of my attention being taken from her as L wants constant feeding at the moment

Probably a both of both...

Louise (3 and 9 months) had a whole gang of imaginary friends, and it started when I was heavily pg. The most significant one was "Pretend Baby", who did awfully naughty things in our house (writing on walls, spilling things around "not by accident" etc). I am sure it was directly connected with the impending arriving of (not Pretend) Matthew!

I found it hard to discipline her, I didn't do much tbh. I was fed up once as she had done something and I saw her do it yet she was swearing she didn't, Curly did it. In the end someone told me that the best way to deal with it would be to discipline everyone in the house if somebody has done something wrong. So nobody got a treat (or whatever it was) as Curly had done something naughty.

It was quite funny at times though. The worst culprit was Pretend Baby, and there was Curly, Charlie, Nina,... And she acted disgusted when "they" had done something naughty (or "bold", as we are in Dublin! )

She has grown out of it a bit since Matthew was born, she announced recently that Nina, Charlie and Pretend Baby had gone back to their mammy and daddy, in England (?).... Curly is still around though...