Question
Our 6 yo girl we adopted two years ago loves to have a lot of drama in her games: the dolls and other toys tend to be crying, to be in danger (drowning, being kidnapped by a stranger or by a witch, bitten by a dog), to be afraid etc. She herself likes to be afraid and no amount of reassurance from us seems to help.
We might have put up with this, but her games sometimes become very aggressive (a toy hamster “eats” people alive; a doll she plays with gets dismembered and so on).
What is worse however, these fantasies go further. She would say things like “Oh, Daddy, if you are not careful when driving, you will get in a car crash and you will die!”, “Oh, I have a bruise on my leg… I will surely die!”. In this latter case we would try to tell her very softly that her leg will heal in no time at all, to which she would retort: “No, I don’t think so. I’m done”.
The aggression influences her playing with her 3¼ yo sister, other kids and adults.
She is not watching TV and we do not tell her any scary fairy tales from which to get such violent fantasies, but no matter where all of this comes from, we are eager to know how to approach this issue.
Thank you.
