Are you hurt, teddy? I know how you feel. Why your toddler's toys have feelings

Do you ever talk to your computer when it’s playing up? Does your car have a name, and do you tell it what you think when it won’t start? Don’t worry, you are not alone! For thousands of years the human race has been attributing living qualities to inanimate objects.  

They are usually things which carry great significance in our lives. We express our feelings and emotions through them; it is imaginative and creative and the basis of many stories and films.  

It’s called ‘animism’ and it all begins in childhood when we use these objects to make sense of our experiences. 

Animism and your toddler’s play 

Your toddler might use animism during play or when they are going about their daily life. 

Psychologist, Jean Piaget, coined the term 'animism' in the late 1920s, to describe how young children talk to and play with their toys and other objects as if they are alive. Piaget suggested there are four stages of animism: 

1. This stage – your toddler thinks that their toys, objects and natural things, like trees, have feelings,[1] just like they do. 
2. The second stage is where children believe that not all toys are alive: they may think their teddy is alive but not building blocks.  
3. During the third stage, children think that toys which change position when they don’t see them move are alive. So, if you moved their teddy during the night, they would think it came alive. They’ll also think that people dressed up as their toys are real, so if they had a superheroes party and Spider-man turned up, it would be the REAL Spider-man. 
4. The last stage sees children becoming aware that the things they thought were real, are not. They understand that plants and animals are alive. 

Watching your toddler in action during this first stage, you might see them cuddle a teddy if it falls off a chair, or get upset or annoyed at, say, a tower of blocks that has tumbled onto them. You may hear them telling objects off or saying that they hurt them.  

The next time your toddler talks about how teddy is feeling today, really listen in and join the conversation – they're telling you something about their experiences. 

Reference: 

[1] Mcleod, S. (2018) The Preoperational Stage of Cognitive Development. Simply Psychology.