you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
or, you can give a girl a baby doll, but you can’t make her play with it… as is the case in my house.
upon having my daughter, our house has been gifted with various baby dolls on every major holiday. at least 2 for every birthday and christmas that she’s been here from various family members. i even have a basket in the living room specifically for baby dolls. i taught her how to feed the babies with the various bottles they came with and snuggle the babies in their blankies. some of them have eyes that open and close, some of them have hair and some of them don’t and one of them even hacks and coughs and sneezes and says various disgusting sick phrases.
my daughter says “baby!” and sometimes she even empties out the basket, scattering baby dolls to all four corners of the house.
but she never plays with them.
she will snuggle various fuzzy stuffed animals all day long. she’ll say “awwww” and give them kisses and lay down with them, but baby dolls are a no go for us.
why is that?
is it part of the nature vs. nurture argument?
does she shy away from the baby dolls because she has a big brother that obviously prefers stuffed animals? (i swear, that boy sleeps with about 20 different stuffed things every night) is she copying him? if she had a big sister instead of a big brother, would she still harbor this complete disinterest in baby dolls?
my son plays with legos a lot. for obvious reasons, we have his lego table gated off from the main part of the house. the other day, i gathered up all of my son’s old toddler legos, and put them in their bucket and gave them to my daughter, just on the other side of the baby gate so she’d stop bugging K while he’s working on his lego creations. she was in heaven. she sat there just as long as he did, just playing with legos. mind you, she didn’t put them together or anything… mostly she’d dump them out, then put them away again… but she obviously likes legos a lot more than she ever liked her baby dolls.
nature or nurture? what is it that makes our babies interested in certain toys, and completely oblivious to others?
my son was a Thomas the Train fanatic from the ages 2-6. my husband is a railroader.
coincidence?
can we lead our kids to like certain toys better? i certainly did try to get my daughter to like playing with baby dolls, but she just isn’t having it. she loves books, legos, coloring, and cute stuffed animals. i can attribute each of those habits to at least one other person in the house… but i know she didn’t get her love of jumping and dancing from watching any of us.
so how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop? the world may never know.
Mr. Owl, how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?
