Soft Toys
08 Jan 2010 3 Comments
in Uncategorized Tags: children, toys
K is quite into her cuddly toys. She loves them and has quite a few now, mostly gifted, because I dislike soft toys and refused to buy her any, till fairly recently. My friends, knowing my dislike for soft toys, gifted her soft toys at every opportunity they could find. From the time that she turned 2, she has been surgically attached to one of her cuddly toys, taking him everywhere. Nursery, bathroom, sleeping times included. She labelled him ‘brown baby’ because he was a brown teddy. In addition, she has a pink baby (self-explanatory), a lion, a rabbit and many more.
Brown baby is her ‘baby’ and is given equal importance in our household. She carries her two chairs everywhere that she goes – one for her and one for brown baby. He gets an entire cushion to sit on, on our sofa, he is fed everyday, his nappy is changed etc etc.
Since she carries brown baby everywhere, it stands to reason that he got unreasonably dirty. Any pleas on our part to give him a bath is always met with strong disapproval and terrible tantrums. So we let it be. He even came with us on our India trip and when the security lady at Heathrow, jokingly told K that brown baby was not allowed on the plane, she bawled. Brown baby survived the India trip, where my father christened him ‘Meenakshi’. Dont ask !! Total gender confusion, but K being little, missed that.
Since children exist to prove you wrong and make you eat your words, I got her an identical, new teddy to try and transition her to using the new one, but to no avail. We did not have to wait for too long for it to happen automatically, though. On a trip to the local supermarket with her father, she dropped ‘brown baby’ in one of the aisles and told me in a very matter-of-fact that brown baby was lost, when she got home. And that was that. No tantrums, no fuss. She then started using her new brown baby, making it seem as if the supermarket incident never happened.
All babies are classified clearly into good and bad categories – chammattu and ashatu paapa – all her own doing, with clear boundaries. Once classified, they dont cross over.
I am not a convert yet, yet I really dont have a choice anymore, but to tolerate soft toys !
