My Daughters "Role playing"......is This Normal and Healthy

When my son was 4, he re-named himself John Smith from Pocahontas. He refused to acknowledge himself by Dylan. No! He was John Smith! He outgrew it in about 6 months. He is turning 19 next month and has no alter egos anymore!

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My middle daughter became a puppy when she was 4...and she stayed a puppy for a pretty good amount of time. She communicated by barking and begging...sometimes it was cute, sometimes it annoyed the crud out of me! I don't remember having any certain one way in which I reacted to her. Today, at age 9, she is no longer a puppy and has been in a gifted and talented program going on 3 years now. She is quite the creative thinker.

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I think all kids go through this. I really do.
I think it's a way of expressing themselves in an alter ego fashion and especially at this age, their little minds are very creative.
I don't think she's got a split personality or anything. My kids pretended so much that it was some of the happiest memories of our lives. We played pretend and I'm so glad we even video taped some of it.
Kids who love playing pretend end up in school plays. Or winning an Oscar.
I think you should pretend with your daughter over this. She won't want to be Jasmine forever.
My daughter was 4 when the Little Mermaid epidemic hit.
She wanted her name to be Ariel. She wanted to live under the sea.
She wanted a pair of mermaid fins.

I believe I read somewhere that Princess Jasmine costumes were one of the top sellers as far as Halloween costumes.
She's beautiful, she sings, she flies around on carpets...
What little girl wouldn't want to be her?

We let our kids watch imaginative things and they in turn, become imaginative.
It's not a bad thing.

Best wishes.

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I think the majority of kids go through this. I can remember that my sister had a pretend buddy and when ever she did something wrong her evil buddy was actually the one who did it. It was funny! She grew out of it and for the most part your daughter will too. My boys did this only for a short time. Maybe it is more prominent in little girls. Who knows..

My daughter is almost 4, and she pretends she is the disney princesses a lot also (she is usually Cinderella or Ariel) she doesn't do it to the extreme of NEVER responding to her name, but when she is pretending, she will not respond to her own name and will insist that her name is Ariel, etc. And she roleplays these movies all the time...A LOT. So I think that it's probably pretty normal and I wouldn't worry too much, just remind her that she can't get away with things just because she is pretending to be someone else.

When my son was that age, he liked to pretend he was a dinosaur. But he usually stopped when I told him pretend time was over.

Imaginative play is not only normal--it's desirable at this age! However, there were a couple of things that concerned me a bit. 1) You have to set the ground rules that she answers to her name when it's important (at school or at home when you want to talk with her, not Jasmine). 2) This one is bigger...I'm concerned that she's belittling herself--making her be the bad guy--AND that she even killed herself off. To me, these things sound like she's either having self-esteem issues or is so unhappy with what's happening at home that she wants to escape and live a fantasy life.

Obviously, going through a separation is hard on the whole family. Maybe she needs to speak to a therapist to work through some of these issues? Just a thought!

C.
www.littlebitquirky.blogspot.com

Hey S. -

Omg I'm laughing right now just at the mental pictures these posts have brought up!

I wouldn't be too concerned - she's super stressed out right now and this is probably a combination of her trying to escape uncomfortable feelings - and a lot of imaginative play.

We have gone through many phases of this - at varying degrees of absurdity. I just put whoever it is into time out when they do something wrong. Even IF "Scar" did it (Lion King was our thing for quite a while)... I would simply say, "Well SOMEBODY poured all of this water onto the bathroom floor and you are the only person in the bathtub right now. Which tells me that YOU poured it out onto the floor. So BOTH of you are going to timeout."

Play along. She'll grow out of it - especially once she realizes it doesn't really get her that much more attention, nor does it get her out of trouble.

I say just play along a little. She's stressed by her life right now, and this is an escape for her. Just remind her that Jasmine is pretend, and she can't blame her for something she did. Find some clothes she can dress up in to be Jasmine, and play the game with her. Then when the clothes are put away, so is Jasmine. Just keep saying,"no, that's pretend" when she insists she's Jasmine. Also, you might get her a Jasmine doll. I found one with a bunch of different outfits to put on her for $15, cut the feet out of the harem pants to make it easier to dress her, and my granddaughter LOVES her. That will help separate herself from Jasmine. She'll soon move on to something else. Good luck.

My daugther around 3 years old was "Dorothy" from the Wizard of Oz. It lasted a little while and then it was over. She even started to call her twin sister by her name. It's normal.

a strong imagination is VERY normal and healthy! my 6 year old has been doing those things for years! She still sits in the living room and acts like she is teaching a class, etc.. She even talks to people (that aren't really there) and acts like she is listening to these "kids" and responds, etc.. Doc says its VERY healthy!
The only part that may be a problem is her talking about one of them "killing" the other... Keep an eye on that and if it continues talk to her Doc, but other than that! YAY for a wonderful imagination!

Haha, that's cute. Cute to me, frustrating for you. ;) I taught preschool for many years and I was exclusive to 4yr olds. It is completely normal. Even that extreme yes. They have a hard time separating reality and fantasy at that age still, so their little brains are just trying to work it out. They see people pretending on tv all the time, so "why can't I?" they think.

I wouldn't make too big a deal out of it, because that may give her more incentive to keep it up for attention. Just play along and she will probably revert back soon. Like everything else, it's a phase. I'd say drawing too much attention to it could be making it worse. She will do it more to get it across to you that she really wants you to understand she feels like being Jasmine right now! ....Good luck!

My daughter did this when she was 3. At school she would introduce herself as Liono (from the old show Thundercats). She would not answer to anything else. Then for a while she was "Nala" from Lion King. And it has been a few others since then. She is 5 now. Her teacher is awesome. She would totally go along with it and fed her imagination. Her teacher has told us (as other have also) that her imagination is HUGE, and it's great! She is amazing and I can't wait to see the things she comes up with later in life. Maybe she will be a writter, or something. Do not discourage it. Keep her imagination going!

I would guess her role playing is in response (coping mechanism) to all of the recent upheaval in her life. By escaping to Jasmine's world, she can distance herself from what she is likely viewing as instability in her home life with the changes that have occurred. In time she will probably start being Abbe again. Just keep loving her and assure you you will always love her no matter what happens. Things change and life happens, but you will always love her, that will never change. Good luck with your transitions.

I wouldn't make a big deal about it, but also don't play along either. Its probably a coping skill she's using right now. If she doesn't seem to move on in a few weeks/months I'd take her to a counselor that does play therapy and see if she can work through her feelings. Actually she'd probably benefit from going weather she moves on or not. This new living arrangement is going to be very hard for her to deal with, and needs to have her feelings heard and validated.

oh does my heart go out to you. I have a 3 yr old daughter who is any number of princesses during the day, including jasmine.
I am going to guess that she probably doesn't really understand the gravity of what she says when she said that she was killed by Jafar and is now Jasmine. My daughter tho a year younger says stuff kinda like that, not the same involving her being killed, but sometimes her brother (11mo) or her parents or something and so when she says that I explain to her what it would really mean if we were killed, you would never see us again etc... and how sad that would be. So I will often tell her that it's not nice and not appropiate to play like that and have mommy and daddy killed or her even and she normally doesn't do it again.
Perhaps you can sit down with her especially since she is four, explain that you think she is beautiful and fun just like a princess but you are her parents and God gave you the responsibility of naming her and raising her, so she is allowed to pretend to be which ever princess she wants but she is still required to respond to you as the mother when you call her real name.

We sort of had an issue with this as well... she wanted to be Belle, (or who ever, it changed 100 times a day) and would say no mommy I am Belle, don't call me Ellie. So I would but would obviously forget and so I would call her Ellie again and she would remind me again, that got pretty old, especially because it felt like she was telling me what to do all the time and that doesn't last long in our house....
So we did sit her down told her she can pretend to be a princess and be all different ones but her real name really is Ellie and sometimes mommy and daddy will forget to call you your princess name and sometimes we will choose to call you your real name, either way you MUST listen and respond.

So I know what you are going through, for me it's extra hard as I hated anything super girly especially princesses growing up and I swore even 5 years ago if I ever had a daughter there was NO way she would ever be allowed to play with princess type stuff.... but I have grown and realized she is who the Lord created her to be and that is 100% girly girl and I can't stifle that. BUT it does get really annoying that is for sure.

Like you said you and your husband are not living together, so yes that may be a coping mechanism, she is old enough where you may be able to talk to her about the possible connection... perhaps not, I don't really know.

I hope that helped some !!

Edit: I also wanted to say that she will also name my husband and I along with her brother different characters from the stories and that gets pretty old to...I try to play along but some days I just tell her I am mommy and that is it... no Drizella, no Jafar, no abu, no fairy nothing :-)