Beyond My Parenting Capacities

Yesterday morning Fiona summoned me to her doodle pad to see the space alien she'd drawn. As I've mentioned before, her drawings are becoming more recognizable. This one had a blob-like form but had identifiable eyes and teeth, and I assume it was meant to be a blob-like alien. I complimented her on her drawing.

All of the sudden Fiona gasped and said "brother, what are you doing?" And then she grabbed the pen on the doodle pad and started to scrawl all over her alien drawing, destroying the picture.

Fiona then groaned in disgust and erased the whole doodle pad.

Now, she's done stuff like this before, where she pretends to have a brother who does something terrible; it's like imaginary sibling rivalry (who knows what lies Aunt Kathy's been telling her about brothers). But I still wasn't prepared for what happened next.

Fiona tried to redraw the alien, but it wouldn't come out as well as she'd drawn it the first time. At which point she started to whine and borderline cry:

"Daddy, I can't draw the alien. The bad brother ruined him!"

OK, I know if she does stuff like this when she's in her mid-twenties we need to adjust her anti-psychotic medications. But what am I supposed to do when she's a toddler? Give her imaginary brother a time out?

I left the room. Sometimes that's the only solution.