E is another who brings his anywhere he wants, save daycare. He doesn't have it with him all the time. Some days he leaves it in his room and doesn't seem to notice, others he brings it literally everywhere, including to meals. We also have five (Angel Dear blue robot; it was discontinued so I stocked up when I found a deal) and I just toss one into the hamper when it's dirty. He does know he has multiples, because he saw them all one day when I was sorting laundry and got SO EXCITED to have an army of Robots; he scooped them all up in a big hug.
We generally try to keep their lovies in their rooms/beds, but we don't have hard fast rules about it. When they are sick and we are watching TV on the couch together they both generally want their lovies, fine with me. DS1 went through a phase where he carried his blanket around all over the house. He even demanded that it go with him into the bathtub one night and was PISSED when he realized that meant it was soaking wet and then he couldn't have it for bedtime that night, haha.
DS2 is super attached to his small lovey and sucks on the corners instead of a pacifier. It gets soooooo nasty and we bought him a back-up for Xmas (had to order it from ebay since it was a leftover from DS1 and no longer made) and he rejected it.
This morning he was being a whinney, clingly mess while I was trying to get ready for work and after I tried multiple other things to distract and comfort him I gave up and just gave him his damn lovey to suck on and carry around the house hanging out of his mouth like a dog toy just so I could finish drying my hair, backing my bag and getting them into the car before we left the house this morning.
Lovey wasn't allowed out of the crib, or out of the house unless we were going on vacation. Since DD never napped at preschool, this wasn't an issue. I might have been more flexible with my rule if she needed it to sleep during the day at school.
Now, I don't really care. Lovey gets toted around our home and occasionally panic ensues at bedtime when DD can't remember where she left it. But she's verbal and is patient enough to wait while we look for it together. I would not have been happy when she was a year old if the lovey was suddenly missing in action at bedtime.
ETA: re: duplicates, I bought a spare when DD was 22 months old (we were about to go on vacation to Cuba and I was paranoid about losing the lovey forever there and not being able to get another one fedexed by diapers.com). It was too late and DD has always referred to that one as an imposter. He lives at my ILs now.
So, DSs lovey started out as a little bear. Mocha. Then around the same time, he also became attached to his taggie blanket (which is small, 8x8)
First, we did get a duplicate. Long story short- he then started having TWO taggies. Once he saw the duplicate, he wanted both. Then my parents bought one for their house. Yeah... guess what? He now has 3 taggies. Oh, and a knitted blanket that a cousin made for him. That joined the circus about a year ago.
Mocha tends to go w/ us almost everywhere. He'll sometimes want his taggies too. I will let him take them in the car, but if we go into a store, or where ever, he can bring ONE thing - which usually ends up being his bear.
As someone else siad, he's called his bear his "best friend" and he likes for Mocha to do things w/ him.
Eh- the bear is small. I can throw it in my purse when he is tired of it.
I will NOT carry a bear and 3 taggies (and sometimes even his blanket goes in the car!) and I'm firm on that. Too much to possibly get lost, etc. And at 5, he can understand that. So he's usually fine to leave most of it in the car.
I just see lovies as comfort objects and it's not me to determine when he does/doesn't need to hold onto the comfort object. So I'm pretty close to the "no rules" camp.
For those of you who have duplicates, is your kiddo aware? I keep our duplicates in his pajama drawer, so he sees them every day when we open the drawer and he picks out his pjs for the night.
Yes, he knows. He will sometimes snuggle with two at the same time, and tell me he has "two ones."
Post by redheadbaker on Mar 4, 2014 14:49:27 GMT -5
I just realized DS is holding his lovey in our family photo in my siggie. As someone else said, it's his comfort object. He is very wary of strangers, and he clutched that thing so tightly when the photographer was trying to take pictures at the beginning of our session. He loosened up over the hour, and we got some without the lovey, too. I actually kind of like that it's in some of the pictures.
Post by speckledfrog on Mar 4, 2014 14:55:02 GMT -5
Ours started out in the crib only but I buckled and now they (he has three, ) come downstairs. It's actually been fairly easy to keep track of them and we haven't lost one yet.
Well now I feel like a bad mom for wanting to keep it in his crib.
If my dog wanted to chew/lick it, I wouldn't allow it out of his room, either.
Last night the dog went into DS's room 3x while I was folding laundry and pulled slippers off of the 3rd shelf in his closet. What the heck? I don't like to keep the dog out of DS's bedroom because they seem to coexist better when the dog has free range to just lay on the floor in DS's room and chill while we're in there. The dog doesn't like to be isolated.
Well now I feel like a bad mom for wanting to keep it in his crib.
Don't feel bad! Every parent has the right to rules they feel strongly about. If we didn't have rules, our kids would just run amok! It would bring me great anxiety to have to keep track of a stuffed animal everywhere we went, making sure he didn't drop it into a puddle in a parking lot, or keeping other kids from snatching it at a playdate. So, it doesn't leave his room. Done and done.
We always just say, "Norman (or pacifier) stays in the crib!" and after awhile it stuck. Now when we come to get him in the morning he throws both down on his own.
He will go retrieve them through the slats in the crib at night while we're winding down in his room but I'm okay with that.
I don't take DDs lovey out of the house or encourage her to play without outside of sleeping (and wake up) time. If she really wanted to take it somewhere, i'd let her but I'm not going to encourage it or push for it. I am thinking about letting her take it to mdo next year as I think it will help her with napping on a mat.
She knows there are multiples bad doesn't care. They are all the same.
Post by imojoebunny on Mar 4, 2014 18:41:41 GMT -5
Buy more of the same lovey and move on. My 7 year old is obsessed with her's, my son could care less. She has taken hers all over the place, since she was 8 months old. We even have books about it because it was in so many pictures. She keeps up with it like her life depends on it. Now that she is older, she doesn't take it out of the car or house, but it still goes with us often. I bought 6 of them, and rotate them. I thought she would lose them, but she never has. One time, and only one time, she left it in a book store when we were out shopping. She was barely two, but when I retraced our steps and we got to the store she left it, she ran right to it, and it was a huge store. Once she spent the weekend with my aunt. My aunt accidentally left it at my cousins house, and ended up having to drive across town at 11:00 at night to get it because DD refused to go to sleep. Those things suck, but the overall comfort she gets from it is well worth the sacrifice.
Well now I feel like a bad mom for wanting to keep it in his crib.
If my dog wanted to chew/lick it, I wouldn't allow it out of his room, either.
Part of my reason for keeping it in her room too (although we have one in the car too). I worry that a stuffed animal hanging out if her mouth is going to be too tempting for our dog and he will grab at it.
DD1 carries her 'babies' with her all over the place. She kisses them, wears them in her Ergo doll carrier, sleeps with them, plays with them. It's been this way since she was very small. The thought of making her keep them in her bed seems too exhausting of a fight and kind of sad, but two kids have worn me down.
Bunny stays in her room. She'll grab that and her blanket in the morning when I pick her up and she'll bunch it up on me and lay her head down and I'll let her have them on the changing table while I'm getting her ready. 99% of the time she throws them on the floor because the hanger or diaper cream tube is more interesting. If she hasn't dropped them, I will make it a game for her to throw them into the crib. She also has to lay on the while I am pacing around the room at night to get her sleepy.