LIFE LESSONS

My Daughter’s First Friends

They may not talk or walk, but I want them to be treated with kindness

Image created using ChatGPT

Please treat her soft toys nicely. Don’t let them fall here and there.

This is what I tell my baby girl’s mother when she keeps them without much thought.

In my imagination, those poor toys are cold at night, struggling to breathe, or wondering why they’ve been forgotten.

I don’t care about them just because my daughter plays with them. She can barely hold them at three months.

But as she grows up, I want to create an atmosphere of love and care.

Kindness and respect are what she will learn from knowing how to keep the soft toys with dignity.

I hope she learns that even the smallest acts of care do matter. This is how habits of kindness begin.

My wife, and maybe you, may think I am taking this too far.

After all, they are just toys. They don’t have feelings.

I am slightly hesitant to keep them in the basket or a closet, too. Even though we all end up doing that.

I guess I just don’t want to think of them as objects.

Not because the toys have feelings, but because the habit of caring for things often grows into caring for people, animals, and the world around us.

Maybe they have feelings, and I have certain obligations to them?

I also feel these soft toys are her friends, probably her age, and deserve to be loved like her, too.

I have seen children tear up their soft toys, pull their eyes out, pull out their hair, and whatnot.

I can’t pretend I was any different. I did the same when I was a child.

I feel this is how parenthood has changed the way I see ordinary things. Or maybe I was always a bit too much.

Even before my daughter was born, I treated teddy bears with love and care.

Now I instinctively see any soft toy as one of her first companions, someone who shares her little world.

I have written some more articles on Toys.

[embed]Guests at home But why is my Teddy not talking with them?medium.com

[embed]Do You Think Soft Toys Talk To You? I feel they domedium.com