Twin Dolls and Families of Dolls Can Give Meaning to a Child’s Play

New Zealand Journal of Agriculture, Volume 81, Issue 1, 15 July 1950, Page 84

Twin Dolls and Families of Dolls Can Give Meaning to a Child’s Play

INTERESTING and sometimes helpful results may arise from giving a small daughter a pair of dolls exactly alike except that one is dressed in pink and one in blue. SUCH dolls are easy to make. Their bodies, arms, and legs can be made of old sheeting or other available material and stuffed with cotton, wool, discarded wool from spinning, or even cuttings of material. Strong cotton dresses, simply made, can be sewn on so that little hands cannot take them off; the whole dolls can then be washed in hot water and soap. Eyes, noses, and mouths can be drawn with indelible ink, and bonnets make for more attractiveness. Washable American cloth is a good material for the faces. There is no hair to pull off or eyes to remove.

Enlarging Scope of Play The idea of having two dolls alike is that the child will tend to treat them differently and therefore the scope of doll play is enlarged. In fact, between the years of 2 and 4 this idea can be extended. The child may be given a set that roughly represents the family group—father, mother, sisters, brothers, and the child herself. Their identity need not be stressed; if they correspond roughly to the child’s idea of the family group, she will soon pick up the idea. With a few pieces of simple dolls’ furniture similar to that used in the daily life of the child the stage is set for much happy imaginative play in which the child relives events in - the family life as they appear to her. If the mother is sometimes able to plan her work so that she is near enough to watch and listen, without appearing to do so, probably she will learn something worth while of her child’s developing life. She will find that a small child will dramatise an incident in or a section of family life

that especially pleased or worried her, with herself as the centre, and so provide a clue to the emotions that were aroused in her by that incident. This also applies to small. boys, of course. Clue to Emotional Disturbances This method is used sometimes in child-guidance clinics to discover the source of the trouble with children who become suddenly difficult to manage. One little girl who had been difficult since her. baby brother. arrived was noticed putting the baby doll in the bed with the mother and father dolls. (She had seen the real baby in bed ; with her mother and father.) Suddenly she took the baby doll out of the bed, threw it in a corner, and put the doll representing herself in the bed. The incident showed that she felt she had lost her place in the affections of her mother and indicated jealousy

of her baby brother. Her parents had not realised that they had dropped some of the little attentions and customs which had built up her security in their love. With the knowledge gained of the child’s emotional difficulties they were able to set the situation right before much harm was done. By watching and listening to such play parents can see a glimpse not only of a child’s satisfactions but of her difficulties as she sorts out her feelings toward members of her family in situations which yield on the one hand satisfaction, love, and security, and on the other frustration, hate (expressed in anger), and insecurity. Much of interest, valuable and pleasurable to the parents in their relationship with their child, will be seen and heard, and the play is valuable and pleasurable to the child apart from anything it may reveal to the parents.

DOROTHY JOHNSON,

Rural Sociologist, Department of Agriculture, Christchurch. -ft