A Reflection on Childhood Stuffed Animals
According to my husband Michael, today is a special day. He recalled an early memory of his five-year-old self telling others at a family party that it was his favorite Muppet’s birthday, Ernie from Sesame Street. While their true birthday, according to the official Sesame Workshop website, is January 28th, his toddler reasoning wanted a way to celebrate his half birthday, as Michael’s birthday was December 5th. He was given Ernie when he was two years old, which makes today his 36th birthday.
While the stitching and stability of his childhood toy has seen better days, it is a wonderful reminder of the unique bond that most children have with their stuffed animals. Michael recalled memories of bringing Ernie to baseball games with his dad, sleeping together in his bed, organizing his baseball cards, and nervously watching Ernie tumble in the washing machine. Michael and Ernie were inseparable, until they weren’t anymore. Just like all of us, as the adults in the room tell us to grow out of childish things.
As our changing bodies and minds get accustomed to the world, making friends, and finding our passions, our childhood selves remain, as some psychological and philosophical thinkers can attest. For example, Alain de Botton, writer and co-founder of the School of Life, wrote an essay describing a philosophical thought experiment to illustrate our inner child. He writes, “Imagine that throughout an average day, we aren’t going to be the only ones showing up and handling matters. We will be accompanied at all times by a far more intrepid, vulnerable, sleepy, delicate, sweet and very shy five-year-old. There will be a five-year-old coming with us to our workplace presentation. There will be a five-year-old in tow when we have to meet colleagues from the Korean branch – and have to take them out for lunch and make small talk for an hour. This small person will then have to make a difficult phone call to a supplier who will try to catch them out. Later on, they will need to go to a party at which they don’t know very many people and where they will be set the task of trying to make some friends. And then they’ll have to find a taxi or somehow make it back home on a very late train.”
According to Alain, this reveals our inner childhood frustrations long lost as we aged but still exacts a toll, manifesting in migraines, depression, backaches, anxieties, or anger, when not acknowledged. Our basic feelings and emotions never leave; we just get distracted, pulled into the whirlwind of adulthood. Finding moments to acknowledge and understand our inner selves is necessary, as Alain writes, “in the most adult of ways, we’re acknowledging the debt we owe to the more fragile, historic parts of us. We’ll accede to a fairer, calmer, kinder adulthood once we accept with grace how close we remain always to the delicate, sensitive, tear-prone little person we once were.”
Keeping our childhood stuffed animals around provides a reminder to our inner child that they are safe and acknowledged. Our imperfect world could have led to overlooked traumas, miscommunications, or anxieties as we moved through childhood without fully realizing. Alain writes, “an eye roll or small sigh can be expected at [this] in all those who pride themselves on intellectual sophistication and worldliness. The disdain is easy to understand. All of us have along the years made such efforts to become adults, to accede to sensible and contained ways of handling ourselves in public, that it can be at once grating and dispiriting to be told that there might, nevertheless, be an ‘inner child’ still lodged somewhere within us — as if we were regularly inadvertently leaving the house with our baby bonnet still on, or might at any moment break into gurgling noises in a board room.”
Our stuffed animals as children are special; they are a lens to our little worlds, cultivating our beginning growth and understanding of friendship. It is a bond that reminds us of that inner child. If you have not hugged your childhood stuffed animal, be sure to find them if possible. Your inner child would appreciate it.
