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Stuffed Animals as Healers

 stuffed animals

When you were sick as a kid your mom would keep you home from school and give you chicken noodle soup. She would also make sure you were tucked in tight with your favorite stuffed animal. Not because she wanted you to have him but because you wanted to have him. You felt safe and secure when your friend was around. Some kids feel more comfortable around their stuffed animals than they do around other people.

Why do stuffed animals make us feel so secure? They don’t judge us, and they provide comfort. They are there when we need them and they don’t tell us anything we did was wrong. They are the best of all worlds, especially when you have an imagination and can have a conversation with them while playing with your tea set. These reasons are why stuffed animals are great healers as well. They are not doctors or nurses and they do not actually provide medical healing but they do provide metal healing. If there is a sick child in the hospital, chances are they have a stuffed animal nearby. When they want to cry stuffed animals can wipe their tears dry. When they want to be alone, they don’t actually have to be alone.

Stuffed animals can provide more comfort than you could ever describe. This is why children become so attached to their stuffed animals. Being so young children cannot always convoy their emotions to an adult, but a stuffed animal can listen and they can say anything they want, they don’t have to censor their anger or their sadness.

 
 
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Who said stuffed animals aren’t important?

Check out this story in the Boston Herald in early June about a Boston transit train that was halted, during rush hour, after a fallen stuffable animal fell on the tracks.

Exiting the Orange Line train at the Green Street Station in Jamaica Plain, little 3-year old Riley dropped her bunny stuffable animal, Nummy, on the tracks during a busy 5:30 p.m. commute. Nummy, Riley’s first ever stuffed animal and first ever friend, was now in jeopardy of being run over.

“Everyone saw it. You could hear this huge gasp,” Nummy’s grandmother and Riley’s mother Casey Carey-Brown told the Boston Herald.

With screams and cries for help from scared Riley, Casey took a shot in the dark and told Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority worker about the incident.

“I really expected her to say: ‘No, I’m sorry. It’s rush hour. There’s nothing that can be done,’” Casey told the Boston Herald. “And, that would be the end of the story.”

But what happened next was simple. The attendant phoned ahead to another attendant, who phoned the conductor of the oncoming train in Nunny’s path. The train stopped and the conductor got out and placed Nummy on the edge of the platform for Riley to never let go of again.

Listen to the MBTA calls ahead to the conductor here, courtesy of the Jamaica Plain Patch.

Simply incredible.  What would you do if your children’s stuffable animal was in danger of being killed?

Casey Carey-Brown blogs about her life with her daughter Riley, who she calls Roozle, and her wife Michelle, in “Life with Roozle.”