Beginnings of Imagination in the Child
Beginning with grasping, turning, pushing, pulling, shaking and dropping of objects, the child's manipulation develops in several directions. One line of development leads to manual skill. The child learns to manage his toys better.
A second line of development is in the direction of constructiveness. Taking things apart and putting them together, building blocks, assembling dolls and toy animals into "families" or "parties" setting table or arranging toy chairs in a room, are examples of this style of manipulation, which calls less for manual dexterity than for seeing ways in which objects can be rearranged.
Make-believe is a third direction followed in the development of manipulation. The little boy puts together a row of blocks and pushes it along the floor, asserting that it is a train of cars. The little girl lays her doll carefully in its bed, saying "My baby's sick; that big dog did bite him". This might be spoken of as "manipulating things according to the meanings attached to them", the blocks being treated as cars, and the doll as a sick baby.
Perhaps a little later than make-believe to make its appearance in the child is story-telling the fourth type of manipulation. Where in make-believe he has an actual object to manipulate according to the meaning attached to it, in story-telling he simply talks about persons and things and makes them perform in his story. He comes breathless into the house with a harrowing tale of being pursued by a hippopotamus in the woods; or he gives a fantastic account of the doings of his acquaintances. For this he is sometimes accused of being a "little liar"--as indeed he [{483}] probably is when circumstances demand--and sometimes, more charitably, he is described as being still unable to distinguish observation from imagination; but really what he has not yet grasped is the social difference between his make-believe, which no one objects to, and his story-telling, which may lead people astray.
Both make-believe and story-telling are a great convenience to the child, since he is able by their means to manipulate big and important objects that he could not manage in sober reality. He thus finds an outlet for tendencies that are blocked in sober reality--blocked by the limitations of his environment, blocked by the opposition of other people, blocked by his own weakness and lack of knowledge and skill. Unable to go hunting in the woods, he can play hunt in the yard; unable to go to war with the real soldiers, he can shoulder his toy gun and campaign all about the neighborhood. The little girl of four years, hearing her older brothers and sisters talk of their school, has her own "home work" in "joggity", and her own graduation exercises.