My granddaughter pretends she’s running late for work. Should I worry?

My four-year-old granddaughter likes to pretend she’s running late for work. A lilo in the pool is the ferry slowly pulling away as she rushes through her pre-departure checklist: clothes, phone, bag, lipstick. Should I be asking her parents how things are at home?
P.C., Newcastle, NSW

Credit: Simon Letch

Kids love doing that, don’t they? Copying their parents going to work, whether it’s pretending a lilo is a ferry or a couch is a train or just hopping into a pretend car and pretend-driving around and around the house, usually taking the Kitchen Island Ring Road (the Eastern Bathroom Freeway is a real toilet during morning peak hour).

And this is perfectly normal and healthy imaginative play, unless your granddaughter is giving off tense, running-late-for-work vibes: yelling at her stuffed animals to get out of bed; aggressively smearing lipstick crayon all over her face; swearing when she misses her ferry because the next lilo doesn’t leave for “twenny fuggy minnits!”

If your granddaughter is acting out that kind of stressful behaviour, then maybe you do need to ask the parents if everything’s OK at home. Check if they’re getting their work-life balance right because seeing a four-year-old punch an inflatable pool flamingo, who’s just trying to do his job in the ferry-ticket booth, might not be a sign of a calm household.

Thankfully, I never had to worry about this because I worked from home as a writer, so my kids just pretend-schlumped to a pretend laptop and sat there for a while, pretend-working just like their father, until they got bored and moved on. Although they did enjoy copying me driving to the supermarket. They’d get in their pretend cars and pretend-drive up and down the hallway, yelling at the cat to “Indicate, Fuggyhead! Indicate!”

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