Definitely Growing Up

I don't know if it is just my little sister but she probably talks on the phone more than I do. It's not a doubt that influence is huge to her. It's also not a doubt that as children, all we want to do is grow up. A toy phone, a Chucky-Cheese medal, an AC remote, a calculator, a broken MP3 player, and everything small; she would use them as a phone.

This morning I was laying on the couch watching TV and she comes out of her room with her Frozen princess toy phone. She started talking. Being used to it, I figured she was "talking" to her friend. I have no idea what goes on through her head when she has the phone to her ear. 

She then says, "We're not going yet, we're not going yet. I'm waiting for my mom." My mother and her we're going to church when she said that. I kept listening. 

"No. I said I'm not going yet. Ughhhhh, listen to me." 

She gets the attitude from me. I asked her, "Abby, who are you talking to?" 

She said, "My friend, duh."

Talk about doubling the attitude. Recently, she started kindergarten and she's meeting all these new faces that she claim are her friends. When my friends come over, she has this habit of just watching us and staring at us and I think that's where she got "talking on the phone" and everything else she does that is familiar  from. Even when I'm by myself in my room and I'm talking to my friends on the phone, she would come inside to check up on me and see what I'm doing. Basically, everyone in my household talks on the phone. 

My little sister has the biggest imagination ever. THE BIGGEST. As I write this blog, my sister is sitting next to me. Clueless with what else to write, I thought maybe I should just ask her why she talks on the phone; her respond, "Because people text me and they want to talk to me all the time." 

I thought she would say something like "because you do it" or "because I see everyone else do it." I had no clue how she came up with "because people text/talk to me all the time." I mean, she uses a Chucky-Cheese medal as a phone for goodness sake. I was shocked. It's like she's really talking on the phone, like someone on the other line is talking back to her. It's crazy. I started searching the web about why children do adult things and I came across this website called "Supporting Make-Believe Play" and I saw one line that answered my question. This line said "at the age of 3-5, children have the idea of HOW to pretend but need ideas on WHAT to pretend." Talking on the phone was an idea of what to pretend and she knew exactly how to pretend that she was talking on the phone. Genius. 

I'm sure she does a lot of other things that she had seen us do other than talking on the phone. When I was little, I don't remember wanting to grow up and doing adult things like she does. Maybe I did do them, I just don't remember. But, why is it that when we're young we want to grow up so bad but when we get older we just want to go back to when we were young? Life is complicated and we contradict ourselves. I'm definitely going to remember this when she gets older and she tells me she wants to be young again. "Abby, I remember when you were like 5 years old. All you wanted to do was grow up. You used to pretend you would talk to your friends on the phone." I cannot wait. 

Deborah, Leong. "Supporting Make-Believe Play." Tools of the Mind. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Nov. 2014.