United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

Adam is 4 years old now. he is at a very active and playful age.He imagines he is Spiderman most of the time. I get scared and paranoid half the time he makes believe he is. Some ppl say that i can be quite over protective sometimes and that it's not healthy for him.......anyone in the same situation?? what should i do?...

In my opinion--any of us can over protect their child, injured or perfectly healthy. Knock it off! Just kidding. All that pretend play "work" is normal and from what I have learned is quite indicative of a higher learning ability. Now I say this because our child's child developmental program director kept stressing this to us when our child showed NO interest in preparing for kindergarten, instead wanting to play this intense pretend game with animals. Thought she was a lion I tell you. I ran myself crazy--and she still pretended to be Simba (Or Nala, depended on the day and who she was playing with). I finally had to back off (shoot,she wasn't listening to me anyway) adn guess what! She is doing fabulous in school, very bright and excelling. Never would of guessed, thought she had some kind of disorder (autism or something).

Just try to relax, get him involved in play dates with other kids so he doesn't have to play alone. You will know,not just wonder or worry, in your heart, if there is something that is really wrong. That is just my opinion and experience. And my first born (now well into his 30's) had an invisible mouse friend. Timothy. He's pretty normal too--and grew to have a HUMAN best friend named Timothy from school through the present. If you were really being overprotective you wouldn't be allowing him to play at Spiderman at all--after all that is one busy Superhero! Good luck and congratulations on having a son with such an active imagination.

IT is a fine line between overprotective and being a concerned parent and that line appears differently to different people. Rosalynn loves to climb and I was so afraid of her dislocating her shoulder. My PT got laughing at me one day. She said let her climb, it is good for her. She said in her experience the BPI kids would feel uncomfortable(mild pain) and stop an activity before they could really hurt themselves.