Playing with stuffed animals and dolls as a child

Post Reply New Topic

Did anybody here play with stuffed animals or dolls as a child?
And if you did, how did you play with them?
Did you give them names?

I'm curious. There's a story my parents always like to remind me of: When I was in kindergarten, one day we were tasked to bring our stuffed animals or toys to the kindergarten. I even remember it quiet well. The kindergarten asked each and everyone of us what the name of our toy was.
Well, I answered "nothing". I literally said the word "nothing". And she asked why, and I told her, because it's just a doll.

I think I was mostly interested in the design of the dolls, e.g. their clothes and their hair, mix and match and all of that. I even drew pictures of clothing designs all the time, back in the day.

I still collect stuffed animals and I'm 27! Mostly they're plushies of mascots from sporting events I attend

I have collected stuffed toy cats, and all things cat-related, from the time I was a little girl. My first stuffed toy was, as everyone knows by now, a Siamese cat. I was really attached to it, and was sad when I lost it. By the time I was in high school, though, a very special real Siamese cat came into my life. Who would have known it then?

I still collect cat-related items, and Siamese make up most of the collection.

I played with paper dolls and plastic horses. I would re-enact stories from books with them. I had a few stuffed animals too. They had names but I didn't play with them, they were just decorations. But I still have them as I get very attached to objects and can't quite bring myself to get rid of them, even though Mrs Fox got chewed by a dog at one point and has a dangly leg under her skirt. Then there is Mr Fox, Big Ted, Little Ted and Tigger. I was given a doll at one point but I didn't like her at all. What I really liked was lego. I had a piddly little bit of it that I could just about build a house out of. But it was before the consumer madness kicked off properly and I was a girl and we were poor so other construction sets weren't offered. I actually spent more time playing with bean sticks than anything else. They were my stable of horses and we trotted all over the countryside. I was a wanderer and my mother was relieved when I was out of the way so I went miles from even before I was five. I never got lost as I always had a mental map of where I was.

I had names for all of my stuffed animals, except for the teddy bear I was closest to. Poor thing never got a name. I called him Teddy for a time, then Bear. Now I call him Tatty Ted, and that name has stuck. Well, my boyfriend came up with that name, when he first saw how tatty the bear is.

Mine came with names. They were German stuffed animals of the Steiff variety and had buttons in their ears. The Siamese was called "Cosy Siam."

The Beanie Babies (which I collected as an adult) also came with names. The first one I ever got was, no surprise, Snip, the Siamese.

I named all of my plushies, dolls and some of my toy cars. They also had set personalities. The first ones were named Laby, Askepott, Daniel, Lise and Nina.

Names were always very important to me and had to fit the toy.

Later when I wrote stories it was the same thing, the name had to fit the looks and personality.

How I played with them? They went to daycare and school (depending on my age), they played with each other, bickered with each other and even fought, they played sports and they went on adventures.
Although I could imitate or be inspired by things I saw, I mostly made up stuff myself.

I had several baby dolls, always named Amy. I loved the way they smelled like vanilla and baby powder when they were brand new. I also liked to hand wash their clothes in the sink because of the bubbles and the scent. I didn't play with the dolls themselves very much, except for swaddling them for sleep.

I had many plushies including my favourites, a mouse named Twitch and a leopard named Leonard. I didn't "play" with the plushies but I did carry them around with me. I also had (still have) a good luck monster named John. He still goes places with me when I'm anxious.

I had a very careworn teddy called "Charlie Bear", and a plushy snake called "Snake", which my Mum made - it was supposed to be a draught excluder for the bottom of my bedroom door; but that seemed like a very unfair thing to do to a snake!

I remember taking them to bed with me at night, but I don't recall ever playing with them or talking to them. I talk to animals and inanimate objects a lot as an adult, so I may have just forgotten it.

In addition to toy cats, I also had toy horses. It embarrasses me when I remember how obsessed I was with certain things when I was a little girl. Nobody ever mentioned the word "autism" to me when I was younger (they said I was "hyperactive," which was proven false. I was very active, but also very focused on books and music and had no trouble changing activities). Looking back on my life, it seems Asperger's was a perfect fit, but that term wasn't used here until 1994, and I first read about it in 1997, when I was 32 years old.

I forgot to mention I was also obsessed with rag dolls. I collected about fifteen of them and even tried to dress like them in hand-made pioneer dresses with ruffled bonnets. I loved that they were so soft and huggable, more so than baby dolls. The characters were my own age instead of being infants. There's a home movie of me receiving my first Raggedy Ann for Christmas, and I just about lost my mind with excitement!!

I had dolls and stuffed animals.

I really liked having pretty dolls and different clothes to dress them up in. I would talk to them as if they were playmates and would have tea parties with them, too. I’d also give them interesting, romantic-sounding names.

I played with dolls and stuffed animals pretty normally.

I’ve been told that as a preschooler I often lined toys up, though.

I had a collection of ten stuffed animals as a child, that I built up over the years. Seven of them were dogs; there was also a cat, a rabbit, and a bear. One dog was my favorite, also the first stuffed animal I got; I was willing to actually kill or die to protect it. (Perhaps lack of actual pets, which I wanted but never got, led to such feelings.) Most dogs were named after the breed they resembled, if I knew the breed, with a grammatically diminutive ending. My favorite dog has a unique name I made up, and one other dog and the rest of the animals had arbitrary human names.

I didn't actually play with my stuffed animals per se; I was too afraid I'd damage them. Plus, I had a rescue complex of sorts toward them, so they all had backstories of difficult lives before they found me. So instead, I arranged them in posed sets, to have them performing an activity, like sunbathing outside, doing circus tricks for fun, or eating dinner. Some ideas were picked up from the world around me. After I saw a "Dogs Playing Poker" painting somewhere, I arranged just the seven dogs around a square piece of cardboard, and put playing cards on it. (Brilliant idea, now that I think about it.)

One day, there was a show-and-tell for a favorite toy. There was no way I'd bring my favorite stuffed dog to school. I didn't trust my classmates not to damage it or grab it from me, and bringing something to fend off the other kids away from the dog would get me in trouble. So instead, I brought in a cheap flashlight, that my parents bought me the night before at a dollar store.

At the show-and-tell, I hyped up that flashlight to no end. I told my classmates that it was my favorite toy, because it kept my nightmares away. Everyone bought the story, including the teacher.