How do you feel about playing pretend?
All my life I have struggled with playing pretend. I eventually developed an intense aversion to it. In hindsight, I think I was struggling with the feeling of being dishonest. Like sure, I can "pretend" to be a cat, but I'm not a cat, I'm a human crouching down on my hands and knees and saying "meow" with my human voice. It might be socially acceptable to do this in certain contexts, but it's really freaking awkward for me.
This wasn't a big deal until I had kids. My daughter, now 7, LOVES to pretend. There have been several years when she wanted to play pretend every second she was conscious. Literally. She would start every sentence with, "Mom, pretend like..." I did learn to be more assertive about my boundaries and would say no if something bothered me too much. For instance, she has always loved to play veterinarian with her stuffies. I have a fair amount of medical knowledge, and I know a lot about anatomy, physiology, and biology, so I could certainly come up with ailments for her stuffies to present with. I could suggest appropriate treatments. I taught her how to properly splint and bandage injuries, etc. But then sometimes she'd want me to pretend like an animal needed a bunch of shots and it hurt. Or like they were really scared of the vet and didn't want to be there. Or like they'd been captured and held captive by a bad person. I just straight up couldn't do those. I can't pretend to be a vet that's mean or uncaring because *I*, my actual self, couldn't do those things to an animal and I can't imagine myself as not myself. I can't pretend to be a poacher unless I'm bad at it and get eaten by the first lion I come upon.
The absolute worst scenarios were ones where my kid pretended to be the patient instead of using a stuffy. Y'all, I *cannot* act like my kid is a scared, injured animal because THAT'S MY HUMAN CHILD. One time she wanted me to pretend she was an animal stranded on an island that was flooding. I actually cried that time, and I refused to play along.
I've done my best to explain that I can only ever see what's actually present. I might be able to roleplay a vet from time to time, but that vet is just me in scrubs. I can't picture my kid being a scared animal because all I see is my child looking scared.
We did eventually develop accomodations for me, and I made my peace with being lame and no fun sometimes. Nowadays, we have a friend who babysits once or twice a week who will pretend absolutely anything with gusto for HOURS. She does voices and everything. It's amazing. However, I usually can't stand to be in the same room. If I hear the dialogue of a scary scenario, my brain just hears my daughter being scared. If my friend is pretending to be some silly mystical creature with an embarrassing condition, I feel secondhand embarrassment for my friend. Thankfully, my friend knows how my brain works and takes my kid outside to play or they go play at her house. Thank goodness for cool neurodivergent friends.
My daughter is also in school now and gets to play with her friends five days a week. Thank goodness schools exist.
But y'all, is this just me or do you also find pretending awkward and uncomfortable? Can you embrace a fictional setting or are you trapped on Earth?