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Posted April 28, 2009 by Mary Dixon Lebeau

"So, who have you brought to us today?" asked Miss Maureen, the enthusiastic young preschool teacher, as she greeted us at the door.

I must have looked a bit puzzled. After all, Miss Maureen and Miss Amy had been teaching Libby for over a month at this point. Didn't she recognize her own student?

But Libby beamed. "I'm Aurora," she said, offering a hand. "Very pleased to meet you."

"Ah, Aurora. I hope you don't fall asleep!" the teacher responded as she led my daughter into the classroom.

I watched as Libby skipped off to play. Aurora? What was that all about? Was this some sort of imagination day?

"Imagination year, more like it," Maureen responded when I pressed for details. Then she told me that, each day, my daughter takes on a different persona -- and more often than not, it would be a princess. Well, no surprise there. Libby insists on her royal bearing at home all the time, though I didn't know she had taken that stance in the classroom too.

"It's really quite funny," Maureen continued. "If we call her Libby or write 'Libby' on her papers, she'll correct us -- very politely, of course. She has a great imagination. Quite an actress, that one."

Maybe. Still, I was a bit concerned. We let Libby play at princess all the time at home. We threw royal tea parties on the back deck and didn't think twice when she insisted we wear necklaces on our heads as crowns. We encouraged this pretend play and embraced every opportunity to become a part of her imaginary kingdom -- a part of her world.

But now I wondered -- were we letting it go too far? After all, school -- even preschool -- is another world altogether, and I worried that Libby's imagination (and her insistence upon being Belle one day, Ariel the next) was interfering in the learning that was supposed to go on in the classroom.

Good news for me -- and for the rest of you MOPs (that's Mothers of Princesses!). I decided to get expert advice on the subject, so I spoke with a number of childhood professionals, including our pediatrician, some elementary school teachers, and even an author and the director of a play institute at a nearby university.

They all agreed that play is the serious business of childhood -- and that, by engaging her imagination, Libby was using one of the most powerful tools of that business.

That's not to say there shouldn't be boundaries. Libby could be Jasmine or Rapunzel or even Cindy Lou Who on any given day -- as long as she still participated in the daily classroom activities. Which she did. In fact, we came to the conclusion that maybe our little girl, who is a bit shy around strangers naturally, was using the princess persona while warming up to her new classmates and teachers.

Whatever she was doing, it worked. My daughter's imagination soared as she attended preschool, completely in royal character each day. Then, this September, she was ready to enter kindergarten --as Libby (with a princess backpack, of course!).

I know someday she'll leave the princess world behind full-time. But for now, I'm secure knowing that I'll be playing with a princess after school today -- and my daughter will be learning and growing, in and out of character.