Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My mother will tell you I was not good at pretending as a child. As an adult, I hate coming up with original ideas. I am terrific at executing and editing and perfecting, but my weakness is creative originality.

This is me exactly, and I didn't grow up with screens or an overscheduled life either. Of my three children, 1 is horribly uncreative, but incredibly skilled athletically. The other two can entertain themselves for hours with one toy (and by themselves).

Me too. I read our encyclopedia several times, because I wanted to. I still do math for fun. It’s just a personality quirk. Prior to reading, my mother said I did this like obsessively sort, count and pattern toys. I remember playing with babies with my sister, and she yelled and threw one at me, because all I wanted to do was sort the clothes and have everyone wear something that matched.

Anonymous wrote:My mother will tell you I was not good at pretending as a child. As an adult, I hate coming up with original ideas. I am terrific at executing and editing and perfecting, but my weakness is creative originality.

This is me exactly, and I didn't grow up with screens or an overscheduled life either. Of my three children, 1 is horribly uncreative, but incredibly skilled athletically. The other two can entertain themselves for hours with one toy (and by themselves).

Anonymous wrote:People will disagree, but I think our culture puts too much emphasis on fantasy and pretending and not enough on dealing with the real world. With Disney, superheroes, non-stop screens, etc. our kids are saturated in "pretend" things 24/7 and giant corporations try to get them addicted to pretending fake stuff is real. The real world is amazing enough, teach your kids to live in it!

NP. Our kid is ina nature preschool and we do very little screen time and then mostly nature related videos. He loves animals and nature and is constantly pretending to be a shark, bald eagle, fox, octopus, you name it.... He then comes up with various relationships and plots for his animal characters. I don't think pretend play has anything to do with the corporate onslaught.