Favorite character in children

The girl's mom, who will soon be 5 years old, consults with us: her daughter plays princess all the time - how to be?

Indeed, if a child has a favorite role - is it good or bad?

It's hardly possible to answer this question so categorically. First we need to understand the causes of this phenomenon.

One and the same role in a child's games can appear day by day for various reasons. Firstly, due to his inadequate possession of ways to build a game. He plays all the time in the doctor, because he saw how his peers are playing, or the adult played with him so, but he does not know how to implement other roles in the game. Secondly, due to lack of imagination and poor impressions. And finally, thirdly, due to the emotional power of the image that completely captured the child. Such an effect can give a read book, a direct perception of something for a child unusual or just a good knowledge of some area of ​​adult activity that interests the child and is associated with this role.

Accordingly, the attitude of adults to the game of their favorite character must be different. In the first case, it is necessary to equip the child with means of transferring real role-playing actions to gaming ones( for this you can use the techniques described above).Having mastered the ways of role behavior in the game with an adult, the child will begin to deploy and more diverse independent game, switching to other roles.

In the second case, obviously, it is necessary to give food to the imagination of the child - read him more tales, stories, take care of expanding the range of his impressions.

By the way, it's very easy to breed these two reasons. If the child is developed, knows a lot, he is read a lot, he communicates freely with an adult, then a monotonous game is just a testament to his inability to play.

The situation is much more complicated when the same role in the game is the result of the emotional power of the child. But more often in these cases, the favorite role is realized by the child not in a monotonous, stereotypically repeating game, but in a variety of subject collisions. In this there is nothing wrong, if the content-moral side of the character does not cause any fear. If this is a negative image, then, of course, we must try to take the child away from him. No direct prohibitions of an adult on a game with a favorite role here will work. The child will still play in such a game, just try not to do it in front of adults.

It's much better if an adult does this through the game itself. For example, if a child plays all the time in a shooting and killing soldier, you can play with him together, taking yourself also as a soldier, but a border guard( whose functions are somewhat changed).And you can take the role of commander, and then the soldier will be compelled( by role) to obey an adult who can ask more humane content of the game. Such a game can be backed up by reading relevant stories, poems that reveal the functions of a soldier in peacetime.

But, perhaps, the most effective is the use of different roles for adults, complementary to the role of the child. Then, in addition to the soldier's role as a soldier - to shoot - other parts of this role will appear for him, manifested in his relationships with other people( after all, the soldier in life has to interact with a wide variety of people, coming to the store, he becomes a buyer, entering the bus -passengers, etc.).

But it also happens that some image so captures the child( or allows him to feel more comfortable, more secure) that he continues to identify with him and outside the game. On a walk, at dinner, he still remains Mickey Mouse or fireman Kuzma. The child can not part with it, just like other children - with a favorite toy, which they take with them for a walk, a trip, etc.

A favorite role in this form is the belonging not so much of the actual game as the child's everyday life,giving the game form of everyday, sometimes not very interesting cases.

Close to the meaning of the favorite role is the phenomenon of an imaginary game partner, or, as it is still called, an imaginary companion.

Imaginary partners are quite common. As shown by special studies, they appear in 30 percent of children 3-10 years. However, the existence of an imaginary companion in a child often eludes the attention of parents( about half of them do not even suspect this fact).

By its nature, imaginary partners can be very different. These are human characters, prototypes of which are found in the surrounding cultural environment, personalized animals, heroes of fairy tales, stories, television programs. They may not have real or literary prototypes, they are almost fantastic creatures, in which the most diverse features come together. So, for example, the Swiss psychologist J. Piaget( perhaps for the first time described this phenomenon in detail), observing his daughter Jacqueline, discovered at her age about 4 years an imaginary companion whom Jacqueline named Azo. Initially, he represented( in the stories of the girl) some fanciful feathered( occurring, in the opinion of J. Piaget, from "wazo", which in French means "bird").Gradually, he changed his appearance, turning into a child's imagination into a dog-like creature.

How does playing with imaginary companions differ from the usual game with dolls, toy animals, which also personify some living characters?

First of all, it takes place mainly in the speech plan, including dialogues, discussion of children's problems with an imaginary companion, commenting on his imaginary actions. In this sense, it is like a forerunner of a more complex plot game - fantasy, to which the children of the older preschool and primary school age move. In addition, as well as likening to any character can be preserved in the non-playing activities of the child, the imaginary companion is present not only during the time allotted for the game, but also at other moments of life, animating them for the child, giving them a playful form.

Parents often worry, they even sometimes tend to consider the appearance of an imaginary companion as a sign of a child's mental ill health. However, psychologists believe that an imaginary companion is a normal manifestation of the child's imagination.

As well as a favorite role, it can perform an entertaining function, accompanying the child in his daily affairs.

But still more often imaginary companions appear and last for a long time in children who have a lack of communication with their peers. For them, an imaginary companion is a substitute for a real friend. Usually these are intellectually developed children, with good speech, easily orientated in various situations, flexible in their relationships with adults.

As soon as the child has more opportunities to interact with peers and he learns to establish contact with them, to reach mutual understanding, imaginary companions themselves disappear from his life.

Unlike long-existing imaginary companions, episodically imagined partners in the game appear in almost all preschoolers when they play alone, without real partners. This is a normal, normal phenomenon, due to the expansion of the range of roles in the game. Roles that lie in the center of the game, the child usually takes himself or ascribes to the dolls. And secondary roles, by virtue of their insignificance, are not objectified, but only imagined. It can be the seller to whom my mother went for bread, - a single replica addressed to him, and this character does not appear in the game any more. Often imaginary negative characters( Baba Yaga, Fascist, etc.), whose roles the child does not want to take on themselves and attribute to their dolls, become imaginary.

Such episodic, necessary for an interesting game imaginary partners just testify to good playing skills of the child.