Make Believe Death

Luke and Evie have always played pretend and it is always really funny to listen to what they've decided to play because it is always somewhat out there. For a while they would always play that Evie was Luke's dog. It got pretty out of hand because they would play it ANYWHERE. At the store, they would ride around in the cart and Luke would say, "Dog! Sit down!" Evie would sit down on her "haunches" and say "Ruff!" And people would stare and give me funny looks. Then I began to question whether I was making a huge mistake letting this continue. At first I would just sigh and sort of accept that they were using their imagination, but the kids stopped playing anything other than "dog" and Chuck and I started to get concerned about Evie's self esteem. Seriously, it can't be good for her to be constantly referred to as a dog, but she really seemed to enjoy it. So, we insisted that they take turns being the dog so that Evie wasn't always the dog - not only was Evie disappointed that she couldn't be the dog, but now I had misgivings about turning both my kids into dogs. (Not our first parental misstep, and surely not our last). Eventually we tried to put the kibosh on the "dog" game but it still comes up every once in a while. We just hope the "dog" aspect hasn't permanently damaged Evie.

More recently, Chuck and I have become only somewhat disturbed to overhear that that Evie and Luke are playing games in which someone is always dead. For example, they were playing house with one of their friends at Christmas and they assigned the roles as follows: "Luke is the brother, Evie is the mom, Savannah is the dog (yes, the dog again), and the dad is dead." I raised my eyebrows but let it go. But similar role playing continued and we noticed that someone was always dead. I know you all are very disturbed and worried about where my innocent children are coming up with this death stuff, but really it doesn't seem that out of line. Just think about 90% of the Disney movies out there -- Someone always dies.

• Cinderella: Cinderella's dad dies
• Finding Nemo: Nemo's mom eaten
  
• Snow White: Snow White's dad dies and Snow White practically dies too
• Lion King: Simba's dad killed by his brother
  
• Bambi: Bambi's mom shot
  
• Fox and the Hound: Fox's mom shot
• The Little Mermaid: Ariel's mom dies (see Ariel's Beginning)

So, I'm just sayin' - yeah, it's a little weird that people are dying in their world of make believe, but it isn't that weird. Do you think we should be concerned?