Why our children need to play with dolls

I sometimes feel like I am living with a tiny sociopath. That is about two-and-a-half feet tall. Often resorts to violence when hungry. Likes indulging in dangerous behaviour. Pokes fingers into my eyes in the middle of the night. And is unabashedly self-centred.

That’s right. I am talking about my almost-two-year-old daughter, who seems to be in dire need of a lesson in empathy. For if an adult were to exhibit the same behaviour, we’d ostracise the person in a heartbeat.

Perhaps it’s the cuteness of her size or age that minimises all her negative actions and magnifies all the positive ones.

Blame it on maternal instincts, but a few days ago I felt that my daughter took an enormous emotional leap. She picked up her doll, kissed the forehead and then hurled it into her toy cart.

It’s not exactly a smooth sequence of empathy. It might have been an empty gesture. Pure mimicry. But as I see it, it’s a start. Of a journey that will make her more human. More compassionate.

And I believe dolls play a significant role in shaping a child’s behaviour. A profound psychological exchange happens when a child starts interacting with a doll.

First lesson of nurturing

Playing with dolls is the first expression of abstraction and imagination, writes Charles Baudelaire in one of his essays.

In a world where everything seems so large and incomprehensible for these tiny people, dolls come in handy to grasp and practise what they learn.

I would go to the extent of saying that dolls are essential to childhood. A time when we are just beginning to learn how to relate to one another.

I remember, as a child, I never showed any affinity toward the hugely popular, hourglass-shaped Barbie dolls that looked like full-grown women.

For it went against the idea of the soft, nurturing relationship a child develops with dolls.

My favourite dolls looked like miniature babies. And I think my first lesson in caring started from there. I took care of my dolls just as my parents took care of me.

It’s children’s way of accepting the world as they start creating a small, manageable world of their own.

Be it in games, toys or dolls. And we as parents need to welcome that.

Daydreaming and boredom

We need our children to play with dolls now more than ever. I say that out of aversion for our overdependence on electronic gadgets that are ruining some of the most precious experiences of childhood: daydreaming and boredom.

Anytime we want to create a distraction, we hand over a phone or some other electronic contraption to our children. That’s our most adult/impatient way of coping with the helplessness we feel in the midst of our children’s unjustified tantrums.

We forget that sometimes children need to go through these sociopathic phases in order to turn into fine human beings. We did too. And our parents had no hi-tech gadgets to distract us with.

In fact, two of the most valuable gifts that my parents gave me during my childhood were time and mindfulness. They taught me how to be present. In whatever I was doing. Or not doing. Also, there was never a pathological need to be productive at all times.

Boredom was a necessary part of my growing up years. And it helped me become more creative. More independent. And more imaginative too. From playing a shopkeeper to a dancer to a Hindu God, I created all sorts of visceral experiences that took me to places I never would have travelled.

The golden years of life

With a little bit of imagination. And a little less digital exposure. Every child is capable of breathing life into the plastic expressions of a doll.

Let your children be children. Let them create make-believe worlds around these dolls. For before you even realise, their innocence will outgrow these fake human forms.

And these dolls will be nothing but faint reminders of a lost childhood. Of a childhood spent well. “The golden years of life,” as my mum would say.