Dangers of Doll Play — In My Mother’s House
From mother’s 1955 – May 22 writings about Cynthia
“Every day she adds 5 or 6 new words to her vocabulary without realizing that she’s doing it…..[including]… , boo-hoo, boo-hoo” for her beloved doll’s make-believe crying….
She plays beautifully and is especially fond of “doll play.” Her pet is Linda’s big doll with hair. At first she wasn’t allowed to play with it but Linda finds no enjoyment in playing with dolls and leaves it on the floor so – Cindy has adopted it. She talks to it, she scolds it, she spanks it – saying “naughty, naughty doll” and then picks it up and cuddles it loving and kissing it. She brushes the hair and sticks numerous hair-pins in it and then says “There.” She gives them all a bottle or some imaginary food off of a toy plate, puts them to bed, covers them and kisses each and every one and says “Night.” She’s a real “little mother” – it just seems to come naturally to her. She loves the carriage, beds, etc. – it’s so sweet to watch her play!”
This is just another reference to my mother’s opinion of doll play. The fact that I did not want to play with dolls was brought up to me thousands of times during my entire childhood – of course, as added proof that I was BAD. The fact that Cindy did like to play with dolls was just another proof in my mother’s reality that she was GOOD. Today I take this as further evidence that my mother’s psychosis was anchored in her very young childhood play with dolls. I believe her dissociative disorder, with her imaginary friends and ‘enemy’ originated there.
That’s a whole other level of crazy-making for her to have expected me, being the one she abused, to want to, or even to be able to play with dolls. I can ‘smell’ dissociation here. There would have been no possible way for me to have confronted anything to do with so-called mothering and so-called baby care without having the abuse hit me square – in my entire being.
I was not quite four when mother wrote this, right around the time of *Age 3 – THE TOILET BOWL. Cindy witnessed this horrific event. How could trauma not enter her play? I don’t have to imagine how this 22 month old little sister of mine learned to include scolding and spanking into her play. And mother thought it was cute? Sick. So terribly, terribly sad and sick! Little bitty trauma dramas enacted by a little bitty child who had witnessed her sister being attacked by the same mother they shared.
Yet neither my sister nor I grew up to become mothers who abused our own children. We somehow knew we had been given the chance to parent right, and we did.
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this comes from whole page posted here:
*1955 – May 22 – Mother writing about 22-month old Cindy
see also related links:
+MY LITTLE POEM ABOUT MY CHILD-SELF MOTHER
*MY MOTHER NEVER OUTGREW HER DOLLS
+BEING MY MOTHER’S IMAGINARY SWORN ENEMY
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