Why Kids Create Imaginary Secret Identities (What Happened When My 7-Year-Old’s Maskman Got Revealed)
The car line at Maple Elementary was creeping along, my half-empty iced coffee sweating through the cup holder, when my son Leo popped open the back door and launched himself in, face bright pink with wind and embarrassment. “Mom. Maskman’s face got revealed.”
For three months, Maskman had been the most important person at Leo’s first grade recess. He was the guy who climbed the dead oak at the edge of the playground all the way to the top, who yelled “out!” loud enough to hear on the soccer field when he won four square, who stopped to talk to the new kids standing alone by the slide. All this happened behind a stretched-out black disposable mask Leo stashed in his cubby, pulled on only when the bell rang for recess. Only his best friend Javi knew who was under it. Teachers were told not to ask, and if any adult came too close, Maskman would duck behind the slide and yank the mask off before he was spotted.
That Tuesday, a kindergartener chasing a butterfly ran straight into Leo’s shoulder mid-four-square game. The mask flew off, landed in a patch of clover, and there was Leo, blinking in the sun, in front of the entire first grade. He grabbed the mask and ran straight to the closest empty bathroom until recess ended.
By the time we got home, the crumpled mask, one ear loop snapped and stained with grass, was tossed on our kitchen table. Leo crossed his arms and stared at it like it had betrayed him. My first instinct was to say it was just a silly game, that no one cared, that he didn’t need a mask to be cool. But I bit that back. I’d been watching Maskman for three months, and I knew he wasn’t just a game. Leo is the kid who apologizes to chairs when he bumps into them, who shrugs and walks away when someone takes his turn at the park because he doesn’t want to bother anyone. Maskman was the part of him that got to take up space.
I pulled out his dinosaur sketchbook and a pack of crayons, and sat down next to him. I didn’t ask if he was okay. I asked, “What’s the coolest thing Maskman ever did that you never would have done as Leo?”
He uncrossed his arms pretty quick after that. We made a list: Called Mia out for cutting the four-square line, climbed the dead oak, didn’t say sorry after he won, talked to the new kid who didn’t have anyone to play with. When we finished, I said, “So Maskman did all these cool things. What if we just move them from Maskman to Leo?”
He blinked at that for a minute, then said, “But what if people think I’m weird? They’ll know it’s just me, not Maskman, being bossy.” I told him, “Next time you do one of those things, you can just say ‘That’s the old Maskman in me.’ It’s true, isn’t it?”
That’s the thing no one tells you about imaginary alter egos: they’re not a sign your kid is hiding something wrong, or that they’re unhappy with who they are. They’re training wheels. When kids are 6, 7, 8, they’re just starting to figure out which parts of themselves are okay to show other people. They’ve already picked up that it’s not nice to be too loud, too competitive, too focused on what you want. So they tuck that part into a different person, someone who doesn’t have to follow all the unspoken rules they think they have to follow as themselves.
I’ve talked to a few other parents and teachers since this happened, and most of them have a story like this. One first grade teacher told me she lets kids use alter egos when they share their writing in class, because half the kids who won’t read their work out loud as themselves will do it as their dinosaur superhero. A mom I know told me her 8-year-old had a secret identity for six months when they moved, and only as that identity could he order food at restaurants or talk to the neighbor kids.
The biggest mistake most of us make is rushing to pull the mask off. We think we’re helping by telling them to just be themselves, but that skips the whole point. The mask is how they practice being that part of themselves. If your kid has a secret identity, don’t out them to Grandma or the neighbor kid unless they say it’s okay. If their face gets revealed, don’t brush it off as no big deal or push them to drop it entirely. Ask what they liked about being that person, then help them figure out how to keep that part around without the mask. If they want to make a new secret identity, that’s fine too—some kids need more than one round of practice.
A week after Maskman was revealed, Leo came home from school and said he’d called a kid out for cutting the line, and Javi yelled “That’s the Maskman in him!” and everyone laughed, in a good way. No one called him bossy. He climbed the dead oak that same day.
Last weekend, he brought home a new cardboard mask he made in art class, painted silver with sharpie fangs. It’s for Shadow Wolf, his new recess superhero. Only Javi knows, and it stays tucked in his cubby. Maskman doesn’t come around much anymore, but all the cool things he did still exist—now they’re just Leo’s. I don’t know when Shadow Wolf will get revealed, if ever. That’s okay. Some of us need to be someone else first, before we can be all of ourselves out loud.
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