About Rebecca Eckler
Since becoming pregnant with her daughter Rowan, Canadian journalist and author Rebecca Eckler has penned three hilarious books, including the best-selling Knocked Up. Catch Rebecca’s weekly unique perspective on motherhood and single parenthood.
On a recent family vacation to Jamaica my daughter came up to me bawling. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” I asked, jumping out of my lounge chair. She was sobbing so hard that I thought she had majorly hurt herself.
“Ellie drowned,” she told me. Ellie is her stuffed animal elephant that she’s had for four years now. She had taken her to the pool and dropped her in, thinking that she could swim. Why would she think that Ellie, her stuffed animal could and wanted to swim? Because she actually still believes, at age eight, that her stuffed animal is real.
So what’s a mother of a child who believes that her stuffed animal is dead because she had drowned to do in that situation? Well, in my case, I gave Ellie, the stuffed animal elephant, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, as my boyfriend looked on horrified.
My boyfriend was horrified because he thinks, by now, that my daughter should know that stuffed animals are not real, and cannot speak, let alone swim. I always argue that I love my daughter’s imagination and that she’ll have 80 years of reality ahead of her, so why not let her believe that her stuffed animals are real. “But don’t you think she’s going to be mad at you when she finally figures out that her stuffed animals aren’t real?”
So now my boyfriend has me thinking that maybe it isn't such a great idea that she still believes her stuffed animals are real at her age. I mean, I don’t want to be the one she blames for not telling her the truth sooner. But then I remember that my daughter was one of the last children of her age group to get off the bottle. It just sort of happened. While her father freaked out that she was way too old to still suck on a bottle, I was laid back about the whole thing, saying, “Well, she’s not going to be 16 and still on the bottle!” And, sure enough, one day she just kind of forgot about the bottle.
I’m thinking, and hoping, that one day soon enough that she’ll just kind of forget about the fact she once believed her stuffed animals could talk, and eat, and swim. What do you think? Is age eight too old to believe that stuffed animals are real?
Follow me at @rebeccaeckler.
Image: +yooco+/Flickr
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