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| A Girl and Her Bunny Blankie- Good Times. |
The thing about the baby blankie is, well, it smells: it smells of sweat, it smells of saliva, it smells of mold. It's dirty. Its germ infested. It's unsanitary. It's possibly the most disgusting thing you will ever lay your senses on, but, unfortunately for you, your kid doesn't care- that’s their best friend. If it were up to you, you’d just throw it out and buy a new one, but we all know that’s just not feasible. So you do the next logical thing- you wash it.
Bad move.
They say dogs don’t recognize their owners when they get out of the shower; something about them not recognizing your scent. Well, the same thing happens when you wash a baby’s blanket…and that’s not a good thing. My wife thought she was doing something good. She wasn’t trying to do anything to upset our little girl; she was just washing something that was putting our daughter’s health at risk. I mean, the thing was black in some spots. If we didn’t wash it, we would have had to burn it. But maybe she got a little TOO happy with the laundry detergent?
Now, I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. I think anything that makes your life easier in the long run is a good thing, but no one likes to see their child upset. And when my daughter saw her “like new” and improved bunny blankie, fresh out of the dryer, she was not impressed. And when I say not impressed, I mean pissed. We’re talking ranting, and pacing, and screaming, and crying and wailing. She took one look at that freshly washed blanket and lost her sh@#.
“NOOOO!!!!! That’s’ not my bunny blanket” she screamed, over and over and over again. “NOOOO, that’s not my “friend”” (her word for any stuffed toy).
We tried to calm her down, but there was no consoling her- she wanted no part of the “new and improved” blankie. We handed it to her and she threw it to the ground. One time she even stomped on it.
This was her long-time friend, her confidante, her “baby,” and she just dismissed it like the history between them never even existed.
My wife asked the obvious question: “Are we done with the blankie?”
“Yes,” she answered, “we’re done with the blankie!”
And, that was it. It was like a preview in to her teen years when girls go through friends like they’re tissue paper. She was cruel about it. She was cold. She was done!
My wife and I didn’t know whether to pat ourselves on the back or feel ashamed? On the one hand, we broke our 2-year-old daughter of one of the hardest habits a child will ever break. On the other hand, we might have robbed her of one of the greatest relationships a child can ever have.
Only time will tell if we did the right thing: washing that disgusting, germ-infested, disease ridden rag that smelled to high hell. For now we just have high hopes that there might be a reconciliation one day, way off in the future, when our little girl finds a pink bunny blanket hiding in the back of her closet, covered in spider webs, and remembers her old friend, long enough to decide that it’s taking up valuable space where shoes could go and she deals it the final insult of placing it in a box marked “old toys for donation.” Poor thing.
It’s a sad tale really. I wonder if that’s what Puff the Magic Dragon was really about?
Naw, that’s still a drug song...
Links:
Psychology of Transitional Objects in Children
6 Tips for Weaning Your Child's Comfort Object - Parents.com
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