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Object of affection: comfort objects

Your child's favourite blanket, stuffed toy or ratty T-shirt is something you all can take comfort in

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Originally published in Today's Parent April 2005

Aidan McAuley’s love affair with an old yellow blanket began during an afternoon stroller ride. It started to rain, so his mother, Amanda, ducked into a thrift store and bought it to protect her then seven-month-old son from the downpour.

“I’d planned on it being just a throwaway, but then I noticed he was always lying on it or playing with it,” says the Brampton, Ont., mom. Now four, Aiden likes to bunch up his bedding and put his yellow blanket over top to make a mountain to sleep on.

It’s common and perfectly healthy for toddlers to develop a deep attachment to what psychologists call a “transitional object.” While parents might think of transition in terms of time and space — going from home to daycare or off to sleep at night — there’s more to it than that, explains child psychotherapist and Today’s Parent columnist Janet Morrison.

“We’re talking about the transition from outside to inside,” says Morrison. During her first year, when a baby needs something, she cries and her parents come to her aid. She understands comfort as something external. But over the next couple of years, she’ll internalize the good feelings she associates with her caregivers and learn to soothe herself — what psychologists refer to as “taking in the good object.”

To help this process, around their first birthday, many children designate something soft and cozy — a stuffed animal, a blanket — to be a stand-in and a repository for the comfort and security they associate with mom and dad. “In terms of emotional development, the object allows your child to feel secure in the temporary absence of the caregiver,” says Morrison.

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