RJA #12b: Field Research Report–

In my field research, I decided to interview a few friends on facebook. It was not as successful as I had hoped because I only had a few people who responded to the request. I do think that people I did get to interview provided me with helpful information.

When I asked:

1. Have you or any of your children had imaginary friends?
Three people responded and said that their child has or has had an imaginary friend.
One person told me they use to have an imaginary friend.
I also recieved a response from my own mother and she told me that out of all her children, I was the only one who had an imaginary friend.

2. How has this experience had an effect on you and/or your child? Was it a postive or negative impact?
One person viewed it as a negative experience. I was told their child currently has an imaginary friend. The mother said: "I think my youngest son has a imaginary friend cuz he is always talking to himself and he laughs when he is alone and I am sure he does. We ask him questions about it and he just says its his friend he won't give us a name or anything but we try not to pressure him to much about it but he is not consumed by it either. My son has had a negative impact. He is scared of him sometimes and doesn't want to go to his room to sleep but it doesn't make him behave badly. He doesn't tell us much except that he can be mean and he is scared of him sometimes but he hasn't seen him in a month or so. So I don't know if this helps you much or not but it's the only thing I can tell you about the experience."
Another source told me: "I had an imaginary dinosaur when I was three or four. i blamed him for everything bad or wrong I did. It hasn't been a bad experience for me because it got me out of trouble, i think it's mostly because my parents think it was weird that i had one. It might have been an interesting experience for them because they were tired of hearing me blame things on him. Let me know if this helps."
Another mother told me: "When my five year old was about 3 he developed two imaginary friends named Daisy and X. He's 5 and a half now and doesn't talk about them or to them much anymore, but it was pretty weird. I don't know where he came up with the names and personalities of them. But X was always the bad one and he would sometimes say that X told him to do things! lol He also told me that Daisy would always play with my make-up and stuff. No I do not believe it has had a negative impact. It wasn't scary for him or anything. And yes to the positive, in some ways. I think that through Daisy and X he has found a way to communicating with me through them and seeing what my reactions are. But who knows maybe he really does have "friends that he See's. LOL :) But it never got to the point where it was problem. Hope this helps."


My goal now is to see if I could find more people to respond to these questions and maybe try and use a different method by asking more questions.