11-year-old treating her monster-figure like a real person

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My daughter is 11 and going into 6th grade. She has always been enamored with reptilian, scaly things such as dinosaurs and Godzilla, and we have supported her interests. For the past couple years, she has loved kaiju, which are Japanese monsters, and the movie Pacific Rim. She collects figures, and has been carrying around an 18" "Striker Eureka" (kind of like a Transformer) for a year. It goes everywhere with her, she sleeps with it, she wants to put sunscreen on it when we go outside, she talks about what it is thinking and feeling all the time, etc.

At what point (and how) do we tell her that her peers might think this is a little strange? She is already quirky and socially awkward. Her obsession with, and anthropomorphism of, these kaiju-robot things isn't helping. I'm not entirely certain that she understands these characters don't exist in real life, even though I've made comments like, "Kaiju are really neat, but I'm sure glad they aren't real because then we'd be in danger and that would be scary!"

I've tried to think of her "baby" as a doll. If she was carrying around a life-size doll and treating it like a real baby, would I be just as concerned? Probably so, given her age. Again, I'm totally supportive of her interests, but am worried about her being ostracized by her peers. Suggestions? Talking points? She has always treated her stuffed animals and other characters like they are her friends who could have their feelings hurt, be made happy, etc.

When my son was 10/5th grade, he became aware that he was doing things to make him a target, but he had no idea what those things might be. It all culminated when he reported that he was going to bring his stuffed animal with him to school. I basically begged him not to, but he would have none of it. Needless to say, it ended up badly, with kids stealing his stuffed animal and throwing it over his head so he couldn't get it while he cried and wailed. While it was a horrible experience for him, it ended up being a good thing because it finally made him realize he did not know what would or would not elicit teasing from his peers. So, for the rest of the year, we embarked on a "things that make me a target" initiative and I (mercilessly) pointed out every age-inappropriate thing he did. I felt horrible about it. I had always thought that as long as he wasn't hurting anyone that people should just accept him the way he was. That was a very naive POV for me to have.

So, the "agreement" we made was that he was able to do whatever he wanted when he was at home, no matter how age-inappropriate (or just plain weird...like carrying asphalt around in your pocket and pulling it out and telling random people about it) it was. He could also choose to continue doing it at school, but he had to acknowledge that it would likely draw negative attention to him and might make him a target. It was his choice to do it or not.

I thought it would tear him apart, but it actually empowered him. For the first time ever, there was a pattern to when he got targeted. People didn't just randomly react negatively to him. It followed something he did. He finally had control over it. Sometimes he would choose to continue being "weird" in school (a word we own in this family. We are all weird, OK with it, and consider it to be a compliment if we are called it), and sometimes he would choose things to be "at home" things only.

This has basically continued through to today. He is about to enter his sophomore year in high school and he still frequently checks in with me about social things that happen at school. He is aware that his literal interpretations and difficulties reading others sometimes make him misinterpret situations. Whenever he finds himself in a situation that seems disconnected or weird to him, he backs off and comes home and asks me about it. It has sometimes lead to interesting (read: embarrassing) conversations, but I am glad he comes to me instead of making a fool of himself.

If you decide to do something similar, I think the key is in establishing that there is nothing inherently wrong with what she is doing. It is just not what is expected of an 11 year old girl. It is completely OK for her to continue doing it at home if it makes her happy, but if she chooses to do it at school, she must do so with the recognition and ownership of the fact that it may draw negative attention.

I'm a 60 year old diagnosed with aspergers - I had two little toy things I carried round with me at school, one was an Esso Man key ring figure (which heart rendingly got dropped in a canal) and the replacement was a little white mouse. This continued until I was 14 years old, well into the age range for routine bullying.

Same ideology as your daughter, they were as good as alive to me.

Perhaps your daughter's desires could be met by a smaller dinosaur figure (probably not), but if so, a smaller figure is less likely to attract teasing.

I think that InThisTogether has good advice.

I also wondered, if you were able to, if a pet might possibly help with your daughter. I also treated my toys as having real feelings, until I got a pet.

Thank you all for the insight and suggestions. We do have pets -- cats, dogs, chickens, and snakes. She LOVES the chickens, but doesn't seem to attach emotions to any of the pets like she does her toys. I've been trying to help her interpret animal body language, and am not making much progress. She tries to grab and hold the chickens, and doesn't recognize that they don't like this. She also taps our dog on the rear because the dog's skin will "jump" at her touch. She thinks this is hilarious, even though I've told her that it's a startle response and the dog would probably like just being pet much more.

But that's a whole other issue. I think being a social detective to figure out what are and are not 11-year-old behaviors is a great idea. Wearing shirts and sweatpants backwards, showing butt crack, snorting, food on her face, laughing way too loudly, chiming in to unrelated conversations with comments about her kaiju monsters, etc. All excellent things for her to work on! But if no one is teasing her for these things (yet), would she be motivated to change? I'm not so sure. She does have some social anxiety that I worry will escalate as she reaches middle school, so the timing is right for us to starting working on these things.

I'm not a parent, but let it take it's course. The more you make her uncomfortable about it, the more likely you are to cause problems.

There might be some resources for you here: https://www.socialthinking.com/Products ... Curriculum

I hate to be the one to break this to you, OP, but I'm 41 and I still have imaginary friends. I became aware of how odd that is when I was a teenager, and I gave them up for a while. It was the most miserable three days of my life.

When I was your daughter's age, I took on a pet rock. Blame summer camp - they had us making pet rocks, I put mine on a leash and brought it to school with me. I reserved it a chair at lunch and played with it at recess...exclusively. Who needs friends when you have a ROCK!

Fifth grade can be a brutal age. I got through it with my imaginary friends and with my stupid, flipping pet rock. You can't take that away from your daughter. Trust me - her peers already know she's odd. They haven't been fooled until now. If you want to do something to help her let go of Godzilla, I would suggest looking into the rest of her world. Is there any stressor that you can help reduce? Something you can do to help her build on her strengths?

I don't even remember when I gave up on the pet rock. It just became a pain to haul around. It kept slipping out of the leash I made out of string. Without that leash, it was just a painted rock and that's boring. All the social pressure in the world wasn't going to make me give it up, because I was using the pet rock as a substitute for the human interaction I wasn't getting.

I really want to encourage you to support her using her imagination to help her with everyday problems. I am the successful adult I am today because I figured out that if I talked things through with my imaginary friends, I could understand all sorts of issues that previously confused me. For example, I taught myself algebra by reading the text book and "pretending" that I had Spock to teach me the lessons. It was my way of processing the world. Before I figured this out, I was completely adrift. I had no coping mechanisms for dealing with the outside world, and I mostly just hid under my desk and cried. Embracing my imaginary world made the difference between needing special education, and advancing to the honors level classes. I just can say enough about how important that was for me.

As for the suggestion that you have conversations about things we do at home, vs things we do at school. I think that sound great, too. Humans need private lives. Just not shamed private lives.

Sorry for the double posts. But this system kept claiming that I was a spammer and it was going to block my account. I got a little obsessed with figuring out why. Turns out, it was something I said in a middle paragraph. Eliminate paragraph. Problem solved. I guess I didn't need to say that, anyways. I wonder what specific word I used to trigger that response. But is almost midnight and I need to grown-up myself into bed for the evening.

5/6th

It is a tough thing b/c you know what is going to happen in terms of peers and it seems terrible. The thing is does she care about her peers? If she does and has expressed reservations and concerns, you have an opening. Otherwise, I am not sure how to proceed with making her feel bad.

We had a similar issue in that my son can't differentiate between "gendered" colors. He would pick pink and purples because he liked them. At first I tried (reluctantly and completely out of character) to steer him gently away from those colors, but in the end it didn't matter. In the face of all his other weirdness, no one even noticed it, and it was a non-issue, so I dropped it. Now he is home schooled, and so I truly have no cares to give about it --he can pick what he likes.

I really appreciate all of the input and insights! To clarify, I don't want to make her give up her "friends" or make her feel bad about treating them like real people. I just thought she should be aware that others would think that behavior is odd. But maybe it doesn't matter? Maybe she'll figure it out on her own? I remember having to explain to her several years ago why the people walking down our street were laughing at her (she was in the front yard pretending to be a dinosaur, but didn't realize that it would not be obvious to the other people what she was doing). It can be such a fine line between letting our kids grow and learn from mistakes, and wanting to protect them so they don't get their feelings hurt!