Children’s relationships with soft toys is neither superficial nor unimportant to psychological development. If you like our films, take a look at our shop (we ship worldwide): Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more with The School of Life Subscription: Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The School of Life delivered straight to your inbox: FURTHER READING “Sometimes you can catch important things about human nature in apparent incidentals. It’s well observed that between the ages of around one and twelve, many children manifest a deep attachment to a stuffed soft object, normally shaped into a bear, a rabbit or – less often – a penguin. The depth of the relationship can be extraordinary. The child sleeps with it, talks to it, cries in front of it and tells it things it would never tell anyone else. What’s truly remarkable is that the animal looks after its owner, addressing him in a tone of unusual maturity and kindness. It might, in a crisis, urge the child not to worry and to look forward to better times in the future. But naturally, the animal’s character is entirely made up. The animal is simply something invented, or brought to life by one part of the child, in order to look after the other.“ More on this and other topics here: MORE SCHOOL OF LIFE Our website has classes, articles and products to help you think and grow: Watch more films on RELATIONSHIPS in our playlist: Do you speak a different language to English? Did you know you can submit Subtitles on all of our videos on YouTube? For instructions how to do this click here: SOCIAL MEDIA Feel free to follow us at the links below: Facebook: Twitter: Instagram: CREDITS Produced in collaboration with: Julia Veldman #TheSchoolOfLife
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