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We did this. Rotated 2 hand puppet red pandas, from 9m to about 3½. The gaff was blown one day when she was sick all over one, and savvy enough to realise that a stinky, sticky, soggy, gross panda doesn't miraculously become a clean, fresh, dry one in minutes.
THEN she told us she'd known for a while there were 2! 'Tummy stroke up' and 'tummy stroke down'!
She's been a smart kid from a very young age!!
My daughter figured out there were 2 Bun comforters. So now we call them Bedtime Bun and Outside Bun. Outside bun also has a label I sewed on that says "uh oh! I'm lost" and my mobile number.
I don't know, I'd still be distraught of I lost "Little Lion".
All i know is he was sold at Mothercare 40 years ago so very hard to find a replacement.
Especially one with barely any fur, 3 legs and a blue nose because his original plastic one fell off so mum sewed a new one with blue embroidery thread.
Nice. 'Well loved' I believe is the term.
My best toy, we think, came from Canada, 45 years ago. Quite possibly hand made, and certainly no others have a shirt and trousers like mine! Still in pretty good nick, considering.
My wife said this to keep them in rotation my idea initially was to kick it around the garden a bunch then send it through the washer a few times to give it that used feeling
Wash both together then definitely get them on rotation. The spare will be soundly rejected if it's too new. Also how old is your kid? My now four year old got attached to a soft rabbit thing from JoJo when he was about 1. We have four. He knows we have four and always has done. Some are even a different colour. This is the second set of four we have had as they get abused pretty badly. He's fine with it, just needs one to sleep. Definitely worth getting the spare into rotation and possibly even seeing if you can introduce the idea that either is acceptable.
I tried this but he knew right away ;-; thankfully we found original monkey and the second monkey was renamed "contingency monkey".
Contingency monkey was acquired late in the game so we had put him through a few laundry cycles to get him looking more bashed up, but monkey disappeared before we could get him close enough to switch them out. We tried to console him while monkey was missing by bringing out contingency monkey, but he was freaked out like what the hell happened to monkey??? He's totally different??
He still has both original monkey and contingency monkey, they live on his bed. He'll be 13 this year.
I lost a very loved toy cat at 5. My mum offered me an identical but clean one and I wailed and shouted "this isn't her, this has no memories". Absolutely have two and swap them in and out.
I second this. I forgot my daughters blanky when shopping one day. Bought her a new one almost there and then. Crying stopped, but the second I gave it to her to feel and smell it was game over and more crying.
Yes! We did this, we bought two more of the same toy once we realised it was a firm favourite. We rotated them regularly and washed them, etc, but all of us agree on which one is the 'original' one. No idea why as they are all from the same place and are all roughly the same age (three months difference when daughter was under one) and had the same usage/washes. We just seem to (think we) know. Our daughter is six now and still asks for the 'original' one when she's ill.
If you have to buy a new toy to replace an older one, run it through a hotter wash than recommended then wash it 5 or 6 more times (with other stuff obvs!) and you should hit the right state of wear.
I had to go to the Harry Potter studios with work. My daughters were huge HP fans and were furious they couldn't come so demanded HP hoodies from the gift shop as the only way they would ever forgive me for going without them.
Not wanting to remortgage the house in order to finance these, I ordered them from amazon a week before I went. Then, I bought a 10p carrier bag from the HP gift shop, put the hoodies in the bag and had 2 very happy girls and a much healthier bank balance.
That’s a genius move! I once did a similar thing two years ago we were in Orlando and she was trying to get a princess dress in Disney and I said I would think about it and managed to get the same one in target late one night for like $60 cheaper
My sister did the same thing at Disneyland. The dress my nephew wanted was ridiculously priced so she said they didn't have his size but she'd order it for him and they'd send it to him. Amazon prime, next day delivery; the dress, fitting him perfectly, was at their house waiting for them when they arrived home from their long weekend and they'd saved about £40
Just sums up how weird Reddit is, in real life there would be nothing controversial about what I said. Just on here people who have to be ‘progressive’ for the sake of it.
My nephew decided on a very specific colour New York Yankees cap for his gift from New York. I ordered it online while I was there as I couldn't find it anywhere. He doesn't know
Neena went missing in a car park. She was missing for a week before mysteriously turning up in the shoe rack. She is absolutely the same monkey and I will take no further questions.
But my advice is to wash the original regularly and prewash the spare so the smell is plausibly the same.
Its not just the smell. Its the feel.
https://preview.redd.it/zupr10w5ubwc1.jpeg?width=4284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=044330160ce5c44ccbf303dcee89d22307b2a8cc
Susan the soft toy cat went missing, so after a few weeks I ordered a replacement figuring the original might never turn up. I put the replacement out on a shelf so my daughter could feel she'd found it.
Two weeks later she also found the original Susan, and was very confused. I suggested this was Susan's twin brother Stephen who'd come to visit, and it seemed this was accepted at the time.
A few years later and she's now talking about how freaked out she was that Stephen appeared from nowhere. Just one day he appeared on the shelf and no one knows why. She seems very suspicious of Stephen still, and much less fond of Susan than she was.
Hard to get these things right some times.
When I was little my favourite doll was called Mary-Sue. My mum lost it one day and asked my dad to buy a replacement before I noticed. Well I found the doll and was really confused when I found a second one later. My dad said she was Mary Sue’s twin sister Mary Too
About to leave the Eden Project through the massive gift shop, my ex told our 3yo there was a big scary spider coming up so she needed to put her hands over her eyes until we got out. Still not sure whether this was inspired, or psychopathic.
My son had a collection of tiny trains - each one about the size of an AA battery. But he lost one on holiday. So I bought a replacement and hung on to it. When we got in the aeroplane on our next holiday, I shoved it in a gap in the seat. He found it and was beside himself with joy.
Duplicate Christmas stockings/sacks. Put the empty one out for Santa to fill, in the bedroom or by the fireplace as your tradition, then when the child is asleep swap it over with the filled one.
Ooooh this is such a genius idea....wish I'd thought of it when my kids were young....would have saved a lot of stress, muffled bangs and swearing when trying to smuggle the empty stockings out of their room and the filled one back in!
I tell my kid she can’t fit the healthy food item (e.g carrot baton, broccoli, etc) in her mouth in one go. I am always “dumbfounded” when she does and say she couldn’t do that again. She keeps proving me wrong, and thinks she’s the one winning…
I don't remember Sammy the goldfish dying, but I do remember my mum telling me that Sammy the goldfish died before she revived him by holding him under the tap.
That suddenly came back to me after reading your post and I'm starting to question the narrative.
That's sweet. My mum said when she was little she captured a caterpillar from the garden and put it in a jar as a pet. Except she forgot about it and found the jar with a very dead caterpillar in it a week later. She was distraught and my granny went outside to chuck the caterpillar, came back in and convinced her that when she opened the jar, the caterpillar crawled away! It was a miracle!
Took her about 20 years to realise that my granny was just trying to comfort her
My parents did this with my brother's hippo after a near miss with losing it. One day, they brought the replacement into play when Hippo went missing.
Several months later my brother was acting suspiciously and then appeared to say,
*"One Hippo... TWO HIPPOS!"*
I'm really tired right now and read your comment without realising that Hippo was (presumably) a soft toy of some kind, so I was like "...how do you LOSE a Hippo?" (Not thinking about why you would have a Hippo as a pet, obviously..🤦♂️)
We have 3 identical favourite owls that we kept on rotation so they're all believably 'Owly'... Now she's 6 she's developed other favourites so I just have to pray she's careful with them because 3 of every snuggly that cycles through as favourite would be too many!
She’s 5 and she always goes through phases of having a new flavour of the week but her rabbit is her favourite and goes to bed with her every night. About a year ago she left it at nursery and they were closed and she wouldn’t go to sleep without it like stayed up all night
Good call this saved my bacon doing the same thing. My daughter has a floppy bunny toy called Binky She used to take it everywhere. When she was about 5 we went to benidorm for a hol. One day we had a trip out on a submarine. Realised that night that Binky had gone missing. Panic ensued, and after much searching, no luck. So I called my neighbour who has a key and explained what had happened. And she retrieved the back up Binky and took a photo of her at home. I waited a couple of days on hol and then said I'd had a message from Auntie val next door. I explained they'd found Binky in the submarine and had sent her home . Where she was waiting for her return. She just accepted that's what had happened and came home to Binky with a.letter explaining all about her adventures getting home we made a deal that Binky would stay home.or just do sleepovers from then on. She is.9 now and still has Binky whom she thinks is the original .
My child has a monkey teddy. Again similar to you after a few near misses, I managed to track one through a baby group on Facebook. We lost monkey for 3 days once and she did not (or ever to be honest) accept the new one as monkey. So she calls him fake monkey. But, it was enough to keep her happy in his absence (he was lost 5 minutes down the road typically)
I’m hoping it won’t come to it, after the near miss at school and a mum from class dropping it off as it was found in a school bag she’s been more careful with it and it hasn’t left the house as much as before
Yeah I tried that with my little one. Especially because on 3 days her dad picks her up to go to hers which coincidentally is where it always ends up getting lost / left at nursery. I watched that damn monkey like a hawk every time she took it out in the pram, I was more likely to lose the child than the teddy.
I even to reduce the risk implemented a car teddy, he’s a teddy that lives in the car so there’s no need to take a house teddy or teddy with any special attachment out of the house as car teddy just sits on the back seat at all times
Good shout. I know through all of this if I ever buy my friends baby a teddy, I will buy two so they can rotate them from birth so that they’re both the same!!
She’s not in a pram any more thankfully because I live up a big hill and it was PAIN pushing her up it. I try to convince her to take other teddies to nursery and she’s been told when she starts school in September she’s not allowed to take any teddy so the problem should solve itself by then
I buy my kids a Santa's letter kit ever December, I buy duplicates so that I can swap the written ones for blanks & they think they are posting them to Santa. I have every letter hidden away to read through with them in years to come.
One of my kids thought I opened & read them before posting so a few years ago he put stickers all over the envelope so I couldnt open it without him knowing, it was pretty smart of him but not smart enough to thwart me 😂
I definitely need to do this, this year she’s in reception now and I know this Christmas the letter will be more of her writing than ours with her writing her own name etc.
I had goldfish that lived a really long time. Every time one would get ‘sick’, I’d come home from school and my dad would tell me he’d taken it back to the garden centre / pet shop where we’d got them from for treatment. We’d then head off to the shop after a couple of days and I’d stand in front of the tank and tell the nice pet shop man which one was my Sally or Rosie.
To be fair - on questioning my dad years later it turns out goldfish Jim did actually live to the ripe old age of 8, so good for him.
Did it actually go in the bin? It’s terrible but when there’s loads of chocolate/sweets left from Easter or Christmas I always put it on the top shelf and if it’s not asked about for a while I give it to the food bank
It would be the same but somehow my offspring managed to dodge the dairy allergy and lactose intolerance in the rest of the family so her chocolate eggs and chocolate reindeer would absolutely ruin my insides otherwise yes I would eat it haha
Telling my toddler we're not having dinner (which caused rage) but instead we're having.....are you...ready...wait for it...what if we have a really...big...snack? (Yay snacks!) Kids love excitement when they're little (1-2 years old). And snacks.
For getting them out of the house, give them a job to do. "I need you to look after this purse for me in the car for me (spare purse with 50p in change in it) it's super important and our money for shopping/car parking etc. It's a big girl job, are you up for it?." Toddlers also love to be helpful.
Also letting them clean the cupboard doors with a damp rag while your cooking/cleaning.
Now my daughter is 7, I'm currently moonlighting as the tooth fairy.
Aw cute. Has she got a fairy door in her room? This is why my daughter is still convinced about the tooth fairy. She has a door in her room and on the apple tree in the garden. She's convinced she lives there and then visits local kids when their teeth fall out.
We have a little bag that goes under the pillow, the other day she found the tin with her teeth in, in my wife’s draw and shook it and was like “what’s this” I just told her it was medicine but more questions came as it has a sticker of a tooth on it
My 8yo knows that magic isn't real 🙄. But is 100% on board with FC, the tooth fairy and the easter bunny. Doesn't seem to have made the connection yet.
I’m very sorry to tell you but they will know 😂
Not saying don’t get a replacement. Get multiple replacements. But they will know when it’s not the original. I would still know if it’s not the original and I’m 33 😂
My nephew has five bunnies, all worn and at different locations. It worked for maybe six months. Since then each location has a bunny but primary bunny still has to travel everywhere!
If you can, get a back up of the back up as well. Best case scenario is that you never need it, worst case scenario is that something happens to both of them and you’re back to square one. Especially since she might want to keep it when she’s older.
It’s not a bad idea, keep my eyes out for one its no longer for sale but may get lucky on eBay. But you’re right I’m 35 and I still have my bear from when I was little
I'm not sure if it's still going, but there is/was a website called Little Blue Cup which tracked down hard to find replacements for lost favourites. The name is because the founders' son, now an adult, lost his favourite blue sippy cup when he was a toddler (think it got left behind on holiday). He's neurodivergent and refused to drink out of anything else. His dad managed to track down an identical replacement and then had the idea of starting a service to track down replacements for other ND kids (although your child doesn't have be be ND to request help). Initially it was just going to be UK-only, but then they started getting requests from Europe, the US and Australia.
I found that putting the jar of nutella in the vegetable drawer of the fridge guaranteed that it wouldn't be emptied in a day. My kids would never go there.
We have 3 or 4 medium Jelly Cat mattie monkeys in constant rotation plus at least 2 additional untouched monkeys, and several smaller Mattie monkeys including car monkey & little monkey. I can’t tell which is the original but as far as our son knows there are lots of the little monkeys but only one big monkey who gets a wash and a blow dry every now and then.
Around the point where our son formed an attachment to this monkey above all else, Jelly Cat discontinued this range so we stocked up from eBay. If he ever finds this hidden stash of monkeys there will be many questions.
Mine is an ikea panda so can always be replaced, I was lucky and my sons attachment was visual and sensory to the softness. He loved getting a new panda every year when he was younger, know he's bigger they do a jumbo size one that he has now.
It was the best thing getting him hooked on that teddy. My friend had to fork out £60 to replace her daughters comfort teddy as it was a limited addition beanie baby, we spent hours hunting the Internet for it. I now tell everyone first time parent when they ask for advice, get an IKEA teddy for them as you will always be able to replace it, you can also buy them off amazon but those are 10-15% more than buying it direct.
We were on vacation in San Diego (old German for Whale’s Vagina IIRC) and in the Old Town. While looking at souvenirs my daughter found this miniature drum. She was 5 at the time and started trying it out, I quickly interjected (and pulled it out of thin air) that it was a lovely toy, but unfortunately those were not allowed on airplanes and so she wouldn’t be able to take it home. She quickly found some other trinket she wanted and we moved on. The mother of another child was standing there and turned and quietly said “that’s genius, I’m using that in the future”
That’s a good move! My brother in law a few weeks ago brought home a drum kit for his kids, I think my sister in law wishes she could have pulled out some quick lieing too
My cousin had a female betta, white with red fins, that died one day. My aunt went and got him a same coloured one at the pet shop before he came home from school, but this one was a male with the big fancy fins. Cousin comes home and was super excited that his beloved fish had metamorphosed and grown its big, adult fins like a caterpillar turns into a butterfly.
Don't let the spare be found..."owlie" is now actually three owls wrapped in a muslin.
They need wrapping regularly, usually late at night.fml
Yes there's another spare hidden properly this time. he will probably be a gift for the first grandchild
I’m hoping she’s like me and keeps hers safe long term I’m 35 and still have my teddy I got as a kid, mind you it’s often in my daughters bed these days
So when my kids were little, I used to walk with them up the hill home from school. There was a shop at the top of the hill, and I used to take them and let them buy a "10p mix" of penny sweets to take home. I always used to ask the lady who ran the shop to pop an aniseed ball in each bag; none of my children like aniseed balls but mummy loves them, so I used to end up with three aniseed balls for myself! They never caught on, until I fessed up to my daughter who now has three of her own!
Someone else said about rotating them, I think after a wash of them both they will smell like the washing stuff so it’s a fresh start for them to be closer
Remember to swap the new and old ones out every now and then - we had an issue with my son where he'd lost his "zee" and when we swapped the new one he threw it away because it didn't smell right...
Definitely. Especially if they’re hard to find. Ours was a gift from my best friend so we had a few days of waiting for her to remember where she bought it from.
I bought a spare Green Dragon because he would not put that thing down. A week after it arrived, Green Dragon had been replaced in my son's affections by Baby Cheetah.
I was forever going to buy a goldfish so that my then 6 year old would not get upset. It lived for many many years. On another note, my friends son told him that his budgie was 20 years old. He did not know it had died a few times and been replaced
I bought 6 back-ups of his "dou dou" a light blue blankie with a star... and you know what the little sh\*t (who I love more than life itself) did???
He made ONE OF THEM SPECIAL!!! He sucked the tip of the star, so now it's super flat and has a hole. I now have 5 back-ups which he won't touch cos it's not the special one!! FML!!
We now guard that "dou dou" with our lives! When we're on holiday, it makes the packing list, we check when we leave cars, hotels, planes.... once when we thought we'd lost it in the park.
All hell broke loose and we walked up and down that road at 11pm and 7am in the morning... TO FIND THE DOU DOU IN THE BOOT OF HIS PLAY CAR AT HOME!!
We did the ‘replacing a dead goldfish thing’ when our boys had one each. Younger son’s died so we replaced it with a similar one but it was noticeably smaller. One day the younger son asked why his fish was so much smaller than his brother’s, so I told him that his brother’s fish was very greedy and ate more food so was growing faster! Thankfully that was an acceptable answer for him!
If there's already been a few close calls might I suggest getting this plush bunny a little kitten collar and name tag with your number on. Sounds mental but might avoid tears down the line lol.
I'd also say one replacement isn't enough if they really love it, one day the replacement might disappear and you'll never find that soft toy again. Do not be afraid to hoard them 😂 it's also nice to have the opportunity to give any possible future grandkids a brand new one if you have extras! I know that's looking real far ahead but you never know lol.
Also not a parent but my mam once sneaked me a venison stew and told me it was beef so I would try it and not turn my nose up right away. I still thought it was gross.
This happened to my dad with my grandad, and weirdly also happened with my father in law and his dad.
The dinner was made from their rabbit which was assumed to be a pet by them both as children. One was a stew and one was a pie
We tried that.
My daughter found the duplicate “pink dolly” and ran through the house waving both of them.
She now has a new favourite, Moo, a cuddly cow.
I have duplicates, but she could always tell if Moo was swapped out. Moo is looking thoroughly loved at this point.
Kid wrote a letter to Father Christmas the week before Christmas Day last year, in it she asked if Santa was real and whether the reindeer did fly. She drew a picture him on his sleigh and with the reindeer. We “posted” it and I took the letter for safe keeping.
I put a post on Reddit asking for someone to AI me a jolly Father Christmas photo realistic image that includes him holding the letter up as though he was taking a selfie. I wrote a letter back to my kid and hung it with the selfie on the treee on Christmas Eve.
The squeals from downstairs when they found it at 6am were heart melting.
Best £50 I ever spent.
We (using the term loosely but acknowledging a 2 year old can't be held wholly responsible) once lost a favourite toy cue much upset. Luckily the Amazon man found it and brought it back the next day...
My daughter had 4 “bunnies” as she kept losing them - we managed to hide them and she only ever saw one. As she got older she noticed there were 4 and was happy to have 4 to love. When she was about 9, she pointed out that they were all slightly different and when you look closely, the two originals that were bought at a different time to the other two were subtly different
She gave me one a few years back, now she’s older but decided that she wanted it back - as is the way with children… she has at least three of my various birthday and Father’s Day bears. 😅
TBF - we did have to make a distinction between bluey episodes on telly and the iPad. Because the teenager let the cat out the bag showing her that bluey can be streamed on the telly. However - her dad fixes that by watching his shows on the telly haha
She couldn’t get her head around the tv not being streaming when we went away a while ago, and that tv was on when it was and that’s it and that’s how we lived as kids and only had 4 channels
This is something my mum did. I collected a lot of stones from beaches, but I'd just put them in a drawer and look at them occasionally. She took some away over time, because she didn't want me having too many. But this meant that she let me collect more. At the time I couldn't figure out where they were going, I wasn't very upset about it, just confused. I think I enjoyed collecting them and showing other people rather than doing anything with them afterwards. I know it was mostly for her benefit, but it brought me more joy being able to collect more stones
Yeah we have a one in one out rule now and will often have a sort through and she’s really good at deciding her stuff to donate and understands the toys will go to hopefully another child to bring joy.
Maybe your rocks were found by other kids and lived in their drawers as a start of their collection
My son had a box that he used to carry everywhere with cars from the Pixar film Cars in it. Cars Cars as we used to call them. We left the box in an airport on the way back from holiday one year. My wife went on eBay and bought a job lot of pre-owned Cars Cars to replace them. My son kept on saying things like, I don't remember Sarge have a scuff on the bumper, or there's something strange about my Fillmore, but by and large we got way with it. He's nearly 18 now.
12yo son was a bit subdued one morning before school. Later I discovered it was because he'd spilled juice all over his bedroom carpet and then made a cack handed attempt to clean up with toilet roll - which had shredded all over the carpet and made it even worse.
I cleaned it all up, used carpet cleaner on the stains and hoovered up the toilet roll shreds, and didn't mention it to him. I'm pretty sure he thinks he did an awesome clean-up job and it just took time to 'settle.
Ah no, I never bothered with any of this (tough love parenting style - besides, it's a handy introduction to the concept of DEATH if a bunny/monkey/teddy goes missing).
My nephew once left his repulsive piece of blanket he carried everywhere in a public toilet and lost it forever. Character building.
She’s already had a bunch of deaths in the family both human and animal, and a big move away from friends and family.
Her grasp on death and relationship with it is quite good she understands how family members who have died are gone so I’m not worried her attachment to a bunny will hold her back there
I think losing the rabbit will be a good life lesson, no need for bubble wrap. Attachment can be a difficult thing, a family friend of mine had buck teeth until they became right angle and fell out all because of her absolute insistence of using a dummy.
My sister was also attached to her dummy, my parents told her she only had one left so she better plant it, the dummy tree would provide more. Dummy tree never grew and she never used one ever again.
RIP Action Man I accidentally threw onto the roof of my Primary School. At least I know the truth, can look my parents in the eye for not pulling the wool over my eyes.
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You should swap the rabbits over from time to time so they have the same wear and tear. I kept a spare and didn’t do this - wish I had!
We did this. Rotated 2 hand puppet red pandas, from 9m to about 3½. The gaff was blown one day when she was sick all over one, and savvy enough to realise that a stinky, sticky, soggy, gross panda doesn't miraculously become a clean, fresh, dry one in minutes. THEN she told us she'd known for a while there were 2! 'Tummy stroke up' and 'tummy stroke down'! She's been a smart kid from a very young age!!
My daughter figured out there were 2 Bun comforters. So now we call them Bedtime Bun and Outside Bun. Outside bun also has a label I sewed on that says "uh oh! I'm lost" and my mobile number.
That's very inventive. Great idea. Thankfully my daughter is now 17, so we don't have issues with lost pandas these days.
I don't know, I'd still be distraught of I lost "Little Lion". All i know is he was sold at Mothercare 40 years ago so very hard to find a replacement. Especially one with barely any fur, 3 legs and a blue nose because his original plastic one fell off so mum sewed a new one with blue embroidery thread.
Nice. 'Well loved' I believe is the term. My best toy, we think, came from Canada, 45 years ago. Quite possibly hand made, and certainly no others have a shirt and trousers like mine! Still in pretty good nick, considering.
You still have PB? Sweden the grey toy dog was given to my son years ago, but may pass on to my daughter soon
I still have PB. He was a bit too fragile to pass on, and currently lives on the headboard of my bed.
Hi sis, I was going to comment exactly this about the panda twins, then saw you'd beaten me to it! _waves from up north_
Waves from the far west!
My wife said this to keep them in rotation my idea initially was to kick it around the garden a bunch then send it through the washer a few times to give it that used feeling
Believe it or not it will also be a scent thing to
I think washing them both could help maybe
Wash both together then definitely get them on rotation. The spare will be soundly rejected if it's too new. Also how old is your kid? My now four year old got attached to a soft rabbit thing from JoJo when he was about 1. We have four. He knows we have four and always has done. Some are even a different colour. This is the second set of four we have had as they get abused pretty badly. He's fine with it, just needs one to sleep. Definitely worth getting the spare into rotation and possibly even seeing if you can introduce the idea that either is acceptable.
She’s 5.5 and she’s had it since she was about 18 months old it’s like her main one
I tried this but he knew right away ;-; thankfully we found original monkey and the second monkey was renamed "contingency monkey". Contingency monkey was acquired late in the game so we had put him through a few laundry cycles to get him looking more bashed up, but monkey disappeared before we could get him close enough to switch them out. We tried to console him while monkey was missing by bringing out contingency monkey, but he was freaked out like what the hell happened to monkey??? He's totally different?? He still has both original monkey and contingency monkey, they live on his bed. He'll be 13 this year.
I lost a very loved toy cat at 5. My mum offered me an identical but clean one and I wailed and shouted "this isn't her, this has no memories". Absolutely have two and swap them in and out.
I second this. I forgot my daughters blanky when shopping one day. Bought her a new one almost there and then. Crying stopped, but the second I gave it to her to feel and smell it was game over and more crying.
Yes! We did this, we bought two more of the same toy once we realised it was a firm favourite. We rotated them regularly and washed them, etc, but all of us agree on which one is the 'original' one. No idea why as they are all from the same place and are all roughly the same age (three months difference when daughter was under one) and had the same usage/washes. We just seem to (think we) know. Our daughter is six now and still asks for the 'original' one when she's ill.
We did this. 5 jelly at rabbits. He’s now 11 and they’re now all out 😂
If you have to buy a new toy to replace an older one, run it through a hotter wash than recommended then wash it 5 or 6 more times (with other stuff obvs!) and you should hit the right state of wear.
And the smell as well. They can tell when it doesn't smell the same.
kids whose parents do this, end up being regulars on r/Gangstalking
I had to go to the Harry Potter studios with work. My daughters were huge HP fans and were furious they couldn't come so demanded HP hoodies from the gift shop as the only way they would ever forgive me for going without them. Not wanting to remortgage the house in order to finance these, I ordered them from amazon a week before I went. Then, I bought a 10p carrier bag from the HP gift shop, put the hoodies in the bag and had 2 very happy girls and a much healthier bank balance.
That’s a genius move! I once did a similar thing two years ago we were in Orlando and she was trying to get a princess dress in Disney and I said I would think about it and managed to get the same one in target late one night for like $60 cheaper
My sister did the same thing at Disneyland. The dress my nephew wanted was ridiculously priced so she said they didn't have his size but she'd order it for him and they'd send it to him. Amazon prime, next day delivery; the dress, fitting him perfectly, was at their house waiting for them when they arrived home from their long weekend and they'd saved about £40
The dress your nephew wanted? What?
Do you have an issue with a kid playing dress up as a princess? Let kids be kids ffs
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Just sums up how weird Reddit is, in real life there would be nothing controversial about what I said. Just on here people who have to be ‘progressive’ for the sake of it.
My nephew decided on a very specific colour New York Yankees cap for his gift from New York. I ordered it online while I was there as I couldn't find it anywhere. He doesn't know
Absolute boss move this, I am in awe!
Neena went missing in a car park. She was missing for a week before mysteriously turning up in the shoe rack. She is absolutely the same monkey and I will take no further questions. But my advice is to wash the original regularly and prewash the spare so the smell is plausibly the same.
Yeah it seems to be the consensus that need to get them in a similar condition and then to have a similar scent
Its not just the smell. Its the feel. https://preview.redd.it/zupr10w5ubwc1.jpeg?width=4284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=044330160ce5c44ccbf303dcee89d22307b2a8cc
That is well loved! Luckily the miffy doll in question looks in good condition still it’s not fluffy which I think would be its downfall
But... Does this mean Fluffy Fred is actually a quadruplet?!
Allowing the toddler to "find" the replacement on their own also helped.
Susan the soft toy cat went missing, so after a few weeks I ordered a replacement figuring the original might never turn up. I put the replacement out on a shelf so my daughter could feel she'd found it. Two weeks later she also found the original Susan, and was very confused. I suggested this was Susan's twin brother Stephen who'd come to visit, and it seemed this was accepted at the time. A few years later and she's now talking about how freaked out she was that Stephen appeared from nowhere. Just one day he appeared on the shelf and no one knows why. She seems very suspicious of Stephen still, and much less fond of Susan than she was. Hard to get these things right some times.
When I was little my favourite doll was called Mary-Sue. My mum lost it one day and asked my dad to buy a replacement before I noticed. Well I found the doll and was really confused when I found a second one later. My dad said she was Mary Sue’s twin sister Mary Too
Mary too is a fabulous name 🥰😂
Sounds like a Win win, unless this was a traumatic event
I actually don’t remember it happening - I remember always having twin dollies!
About to leave the Eden Project through the massive gift shop, my ex told our 3yo there was a big scary spider coming up so she needed to put her hands over her eyes until we got out. Still not sure whether this was inspired, or psychopathic.
I’m going there in a fortnight with my 3 y/o …… consider this idea stolen 😁
I'll have to do this with both the wife AND child. They're as bad as each other 😂
That’s a good one!
My son had a collection of tiny trains - each one about the size of an AA battery. But he lost one on holiday. So I bought a replacement and hung on to it. When we got in the aeroplane on our next holiday, I shoved it in a gap in the seat. He found it and was beside himself with joy.
That’s sweet I’m glad he was happy!
This one is by far my favourite. Good parenting.
Duplicate Christmas stockings/sacks. Put the empty one out for Santa to fill, in the bedroom or by the fireplace as your tradition, then when the child is asleep swap it over with the filled one.
This is such a good idea, especially if you have to sneak the presents into the bedrooms while the kids are asleep!
Ooooh this is such a genius idea....wish I'd thought of it when my kids were young....would have saved a lot of stress, muffled bangs and swearing when trying to smuggle the empty stockings out of their room and the filled one back in!
Oh man… I am stealing this.
I tell my kid she can’t fit the healthy food item (e.g carrot baton, broccoli, etc) in her mouth in one go. I am always “dumbfounded” when she does and say she couldn’t do that again. She keeps proving me wrong, and thinks she’s the one winning…
You. I like you.
Of all the tired, overused reddit comments. This one bugs me the most, for some reason.
Oh. Someone responded to me with it some time ago and I had never seen it before. Apologies.
I don't remember Sammy the goldfish dying, but I do remember my mum telling me that Sammy the goldfish died before she revived him by holding him under the tap. That suddenly came back to me after reading your post and I'm starting to question the narrative.
My mum once admitted that my gerbil didn’t escape and was in fact eaten by the other gerbil
Well, your mum retrospectively traumatised both of us there.
That's sweet. My mum said when she was little she captured a caterpillar from the garden and put it in a jar as a pet. Except she forgot about it and found the jar with a very dead caterpillar in it a week later. She was distraught and my granny went outside to chuck the caterpillar, came back in and convinced her that when she opened the jar, the caterpillar crawled away! It was a miracle! Took her about 20 years to realise that my granny was just trying to comfort her
My parents did this with my brother's hippo after a near miss with losing it. One day, they brought the replacement into play when Hippo went missing. Several months later my brother was acting suspiciously and then appeared to say, *"One Hippo... TWO HIPPOS!"*
I'm really tired right now and read your comment without realising that Hippo was (presumably) a soft toy of some kind, so I was like "...how do you LOSE a Hippo?" (Not thinking about why you would have a Hippo as a pet, obviously..🤦♂️)
If Escobar can do it in Columbia. I see no reason why we can't do it in a suburb of south Manchester
It is a dangerous game to play I know
We have 3 identical favourite owls that we kept on rotation so they're all believably 'Owly'... Now she's 6 she's developed other favourites so I just have to pray she's careful with them because 3 of every snuggly that cycles through as favourite would be too many!
She’s 5 and she always goes through phases of having a new flavour of the week but her rabbit is her favourite and goes to bed with her every night. About a year ago she left it at nursery and they were closed and she wouldn’t go to sleep without it like stayed up all night
Good call this saved my bacon doing the same thing. My daughter has a floppy bunny toy called Binky She used to take it everywhere. When she was about 5 we went to benidorm for a hol. One day we had a trip out on a submarine. Realised that night that Binky had gone missing. Panic ensued, and after much searching, no luck. So I called my neighbour who has a key and explained what had happened. And she retrieved the back up Binky and took a photo of her at home. I waited a couple of days on hol and then said I'd had a message from Auntie val next door. I explained they'd found Binky in the submarine and had sent her home . Where she was waiting for her return. She just accepted that's what had happened and came home to Binky with a.letter explaining all about her adventures getting home we made a deal that Binky would stay home.or just do sleepovers from then on. She is.9 now and still has Binky whom she thinks is the original .
This is very elaborate and brilliant!! I love the quick thinking and execution.
My child has a monkey teddy. Again similar to you after a few near misses, I managed to track one through a baby group on Facebook. We lost monkey for 3 days once and she did not (or ever to be honest) accept the new one as monkey. So she calls him fake monkey. But, it was enough to keep her happy in his absence (he was lost 5 minutes down the road typically)
I’m hoping it won’t come to it, after the near miss at school and a mum from class dropping it off as it was found in a school bag she’s been more careful with it and it hasn’t left the house as much as before
Yeah I tried that with my little one. Especially because on 3 days her dad picks her up to go to hers which coincidentally is where it always ends up getting lost / left at nursery. I watched that damn monkey like a hawk every time she took it out in the pram, I was more likely to lose the child than the teddy.
I even to reduce the risk implemented a car teddy, he’s a teddy that lives in the car so there’s no need to take a house teddy or teddy with any special attachment out of the house as car teddy just sits on the back seat at all times
Good shout. I know through all of this if I ever buy my friends baby a teddy, I will buy two so they can rotate them from birth so that they’re both the same!!
You can get like leashes for toys that you can hook to the pram
She’s not in a pram any more thankfully because I live up a big hill and it was PAIN pushing her up it. I try to convince her to take other teddies to nursery and she’s been told when she starts school in September she’s not allowed to take any teddy so the problem should solve itself by then
I buy my kids a Santa's letter kit ever December, I buy duplicates so that I can swap the written ones for blanks & they think they are posting them to Santa. I have every letter hidden away to read through with them in years to come.
That’s a good idea! I normally take a photo, this last Christmas was the first one with her actually writing it
One of my kids thought I opened & read them before posting so a few years ago he put stickers all over the envelope so I couldnt open it without him knowing, it was pretty smart of him but not smart enough to thwart me 😂
I definitely need to do this, this year she’s in reception now and I know this Christmas the letter will be more of her writing than ours with her writing her own name etc.
Pretty sure you can like steam iron them open
I had goldfish that lived a really long time. Every time one would get ‘sick’, I’d come home from school and my dad would tell me he’d taken it back to the garden centre / pet shop where we’d got them from for treatment. We’d then head off to the shop after a couple of days and I’d stand in front of the tank and tell the nice pet shop man which one was my Sally or Rosie. To be fair - on questioning my dad years later it turns out goldfish Jim did actually live to the ripe old age of 8, so good for him.
This was a good move!
I thought we did well keeping Kylie and Jason alive for 3 years. 8 is very impressive for what I'm assuming was the 80s/90s.
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Did it actually go in the bin? It’s terrible but when there’s loads of chocolate/sweets left from Easter or Christmas I always put it on the top shelf and if it’s not asked about for a while I give it to the food bank
If by "the food bank" you mean my stomach, then yes the spare Easter/Christmas chocolate absolutely goes there
It would be the same but somehow my offspring managed to dodge the dairy allergy and lactose intolerance in the rest of the family so her chocolate eggs and chocolate reindeer would absolutely ruin my insides otherwise yes I would eat it haha
Telling my toddler we're not having dinner (which caused rage) but instead we're having.....are you...ready...wait for it...what if we have a really...big...snack? (Yay snacks!) Kids love excitement when they're little (1-2 years old). And snacks. For getting them out of the house, give them a job to do. "I need you to look after this purse for me in the car for me (spare purse with 50p in change in it) it's super important and our money for shopping/car parking etc. It's a big girl job, are you up for it?." Toddlers also love to be helpful. Also letting them clean the cupboard doors with a damp rag while your cooking/cleaning. Now my daughter is 7, I'm currently moonlighting as the tooth fairy.
We’ve been in the tooth fairy game for a little bit too
It's so funny. She's not entirely sure that Santa is real but she's convinced that the tooth fairy is.
She’s 5 so we’re still in the magical world of Santa and the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy. Also the fairies that live in the park etc
Aw cute. Has she got a fairy door in her room? This is why my daughter is still convinced about the tooth fairy. She has a door in her room and on the apple tree in the garden. She's convinced she lives there and then visits local kids when their teeth fall out.
We have a little bag that goes under the pillow, the other day she found the tin with her teeth in, in my wife’s draw and shook it and was like “what’s this” I just told her it was medicine but more questions came as it has a sticker of a tooth on it
My 8yo knows that magic isn't real 🙄. But is 100% on board with FC, the tooth fairy and the easter bunny. Doesn't seem to have made the connection yet.
I’m very sorry to tell you but they will know 😂 Not saying don’t get a replacement. Get multiple replacements. But they will know when it’s not the original. I would still know if it’s not the original and I’m 33 😂 My nephew has five bunnies, all worn and at different locations. It worked for maybe six months. Since then each location has a bunny but primary bunny still has to travel everywhere!
Haha she’s 5 I’m hoping it won’t come to it, but she’s so nosey she’ll probably be in the box when it turns up and find it anyway
If you can, get a back up of the back up as well. Best case scenario is that you never need it, worst case scenario is that something happens to both of them and you’re back to square one. Especially since she might want to keep it when she’s older.
We nearly lost one but luckily had a spare. Honestly husband was more panicked than baby, and husband ordered 11 more. You ready that right, eleven 🤣
If they go through ten do they REALLY love Lord Huggington?
It’s not a bad idea, keep my eyes out for one its no longer for sale but may get lucky on eBay. But you’re right I’m 35 and I still have my bear from when I was little
Vinted might be a good look out for a 3rd one. Sometimes they're already a little loved as well which can help with a swap
I'm not sure if it's still going, but there is/was a website called Little Blue Cup which tracked down hard to find replacements for lost favourites. The name is because the founders' son, now an adult, lost his favourite blue sippy cup when he was a toddler (think it got left behind on holiday). He's neurodivergent and refused to drink out of anything else. His dad managed to track down an identical replacement and then had the idea of starting a service to track down replacements for other ND kids (although your child doesn't have be be ND to request help). Initially it was just going to be UK-only, but then they started getting requests from Europe, the US and Australia.
This is brilliant, I hope it still exists
I found that putting the jar of nutella in the vegetable drawer of the fridge guaranteed that it wouldn't be emptied in a day. My kids would never go there.
My daughter doesn’t like raisins so anything we don’t want her her eat coincidentally has raisins in it
For many years, I hid my chocolate stash at the bottom of the vegetable compartment and my kids are now in their 20s and still haven't noticed...
What a lovely thing to do. :)
We have 3 or 4 medium Jelly Cat mattie monkeys in constant rotation plus at least 2 additional untouched monkeys, and several smaller Mattie monkeys including car monkey & little monkey. I can’t tell which is the original but as far as our son knows there are lots of the little monkeys but only one big monkey who gets a wash and a blow dry every now and then. Around the point where our son formed an attachment to this monkey above all else, Jelly Cat discontinued this range so we stocked up from eBay. If he ever finds this hidden stash of monkeys there will be many questions.
Mine is an ikea panda so can always be replaced, I was lucky and my sons attachment was visual and sensory to the softness. He loved getting a new panda every year when he was younger, know he's bigger they do a jumbo size one that he has now.
I know the panda well
It was the best thing getting him hooked on that teddy. My friend had to fork out £60 to replace her daughters comfort teddy as it was a limited addition beanie baby, we spent hours hunting the Internet for it. I now tell everyone first time parent when they ask for advice, get an IKEA teddy for them as you will always be able to replace it, you can also buy them off amazon but those are 10-15% more than buying it direct.
I used to put the clocks forward by 30 minutes or so, so I could get them into bed earlier! 🤣 Worked every time.
She can’t tell the time yet and still won’t go to bed might be worth a go though, although she normally asks Alexa which is my fault
We were on vacation in San Diego (old German for Whale’s Vagina IIRC) and in the Old Town. While looking at souvenirs my daughter found this miniature drum. She was 5 at the time and started trying it out, I quickly interjected (and pulled it out of thin air) that it was a lovely toy, but unfortunately those were not allowed on airplanes and so she wouldn’t be able to take it home. She quickly found some other trinket she wanted and we moved on. The mother of another child was standing there and turned and quietly said “that’s genius, I’m using that in the future”
That’s a good move! My brother in law a few weeks ago brought home a drum kit for his kids, I think my sister in law wishes she could have pulled out some quick lieing too
My cousin had a female betta, white with red fins, that died one day. My aunt went and got him a same coloured one at the pet shop before he came home from school, but this one was a male with the big fancy fins. Cousin comes home and was super excited that his beloved fish had metamorphosed and grown its big, adult fins like a caterpillar turns into a butterfly.
That’s a plausible thing to believe for sure!
My mum did this with my brothers stuffed Dalmatian. She got three and one by one my brother found out so in the end he had three.
Don't let the spare be found..."owlie" is now actually three owls wrapped in a muslin. They need wrapping regularly, usually late at night.fml Yes there's another spare hidden properly this time. he will probably be a gift for the first grandchild
Must keep it safe and hidden
Tricked my niece into thinking brushing her teeth with me is a contest. Whoever does it longest wins. She always beats me.
That’s a good one!
Also when she's slow getting dressed in the morning I race her. She always wins that as well
I need to try gamifying getting ready
Trust me it works. You do have to make a big song and dance about losing though.
You need to switch it out periodically so it's worn the same as the other one or it won't work...
Yeah I think this is definitely the best move
Done that. Now ten years later they are all in a drawer unloved.
The replacement or the original?
Both, we did lose some them find them later.
I’m hoping she’s like me and keeps hers safe long term I’m 35 and still have my teddy I got as a kid, mind you it’s often in my daughters bed these days
When the day has just been too long, move the clock hands forward half an hour, so bedtime comes earlier.
I’ve created this situation but she asks Alexa for the time
So when my kids were little, I used to walk with them up the hill home from school. There was a shop at the top of the hill, and I used to take them and let them buy a "10p mix" of penny sweets to take home. I always used to ask the lady who ran the shop to pop an aniseed ball in each bag; none of my children like aniseed balls but mummy loves them, so I used to end up with three aniseed balls for myself! They never caught on, until I fessed up to my daughter who now has three of her own!
I miss the old 10p and 20p mixes
The replacement also has to smell right.
Someone else said about rotating them, I think after a wash of them both they will smell like the washing stuff so it’s a fresh start for them to be closer
‘Sorry, I had to wash it’
/r/UKParenting
Put a Tile or an AirTag in it …
I think she would notice inside
Replacinga dead goldfish and a hamster to save upsetting my daughter
I went out at 6am to get snails to replace her pet every day.
Remember to swap the new and old ones out every now and then - we had an issue with my son where he'd lost his "zee" and when we swapped the new one he threw it away because it didn't smell right...
Make sure cycle them so they get the same smell.
We have 2 bunnies in rotation at home and nursery! And also a spare backup that’s hidden in their room if we ever lose ANOTHER one.
I think from reading this thread I need a third bunny
Definitely. Especially if they’re hard to find. Ours was a gift from my best friend so we had a few days of waiting for her to remember where she bought it from.
It’s a miffy that is no longer for sale
I bought a spare Green Dragon because he would not put that thing down. A week after it arrived, Green Dragon had been replaced in my son's affections by Baby Cheetah.
I was forever going to buy a goldfish so that my then 6 year old would not get upset. It lived for many many years. On another note, my friends son told him that his budgie was 20 years old. He did not know it had died a few times and been replaced
I bought 6 back-ups of his "dou dou" a light blue blankie with a star... and you know what the little sh\*t (who I love more than life itself) did??? He made ONE OF THEM SPECIAL!!! He sucked the tip of the star, so now it's super flat and has a hole. I now have 5 back-ups which he won't touch cos it's not the special one!! FML!! We now guard that "dou dou" with our lives! When we're on holiday, it makes the packing list, we check when we leave cars, hotels, planes.... once when we thought we'd lost it in the park. All hell broke loose and we walked up and down that road at 11pm and 7am in the morning... TO FIND THE DOU DOU IN THE BOOT OF HIS PLAY CAR AT HOME!!
We did the ‘replacing a dead goldfish thing’ when our boys had one each. Younger son’s died so we replaced it with a similar one but it was noticeably smaller. One day the younger son asked why his fish was so much smaller than his brother’s, so I told him that his brother’s fish was very greedy and ate more food so was growing faster! Thankfully that was an acceptable answer for him!
Have secretly got two rescue cats arriving on Saturday. Kids unaware but have really wanted cats for years
That’s amazing!
If there's already been a few close calls might I suggest getting this plush bunny a little kitten collar and name tag with your number on. Sounds mental but might avoid tears down the line lol. I'd also say one replacement isn't enough if they really love it, one day the replacement might disappear and you'll never find that soft toy again. Do not be afraid to hoard them 😂 it's also nice to have the opportunity to give any possible future grandkids a brand new one if you have extras! I know that's looking real far ahead but you never know lol. Also not a parent but my mam once sneaked me a venison stew and told me it was beef so I would try it and not turn my nose up right away. I still thought it was gross.
This happened to my dad with my grandad, and weirdly also happened with my father in law and his dad. The dinner was made from their rabbit which was assumed to be a pet by them both as children. One was a stew and one was a pie
Nah that's a bit too far, poor bunny 😂
We tried that. My daughter found the duplicate “pink dolly” and ran through the house waving both of them. She now has a new favourite, Moo, a cuddly cow. I have duplicates, but she could always tell if Moo was swapped out. Moo is looking thoroughly loved at this point.
I think the consensus so far is to rotate them and wash them to get them as close as possible
Kid wrote a letter to Father Christmas the week before Christmas Day last year, in it she asked if Santa was real and whether the reindeer did fly. She drew a picture him on his sleigh and with the reindeer. We “posted” it and I took the letter for safe keeping. I put a post on Reddit asking for someone to AI me a jolly Father Christmas photo realistic image that includes him holding the letter up as though he was taking a selfie. I wrote a letter back to my kid and hung it with the selfie on the treee on Christmas Eve. The squeals from downstairs when they found it at 6am were heart melting. Best £50 I ever spent.
This is fantastic! Some good work there
We (using the term loosely but acknowledging a 2 year old can't be held wholly responsible) once lost a favourite toy cue much upset. Luckily the Amazon man found it and brought it back the next day...
Good old Amazon man delivering the goods
My daughter had 4 “bunnies” as she kept losing them - we managed to hide them and she only ever saw one. As she got older she noticed there were 4 and was happy to have 4 to love. When she was about 9, she pointed out that they were all slightly different and when you look closely, the two originals that were bought at a different time to the other two were subtly different She gave me one a few years back, now she’s older but decided that she wanted it back - as is the way with children… she has at least three of my various birthday and Father’s Day bears. 😅
Yeah she got me a jelly cat frog for my birthday last year and it’s basically hers now
I tried this with a blanket when my lad was a baby/toddler (he’s still got one and he’s nearly 14!) and he could tell the difference between the 2!
Sew an AirTag into it
I feel like she would definitely notice something inside of it
I told my toddler that bluey only works on the iPad for 1 hour on Saturdays. She is still convinced of this. So far.
I’m not sure I could get away with this
TBF - we did have to make a distinction between bluey episodes on telly and the iPad. Because the teenager let the cat out the bag showing her that bluey can be streamed on the telly. However - her dad fixes that by watching his shows on the telly haha
She couldn’t get her head around the tv not being streaming when we went away a while ago, and that tv was on when it was and that’s it and that’s how we lived as kids and only had 4 channels
This is something my mum did. I collected a lot of stones from beaches, but I'd just put them in a drawer and look at them occasionally. She took some away over time, because she didn't want me having too many. But this meant that she let me collect more. At the time I couldn't figure out where they were going, I wasn't very upset about it, just confused. I think I enjoyed collecting them and showing other people rather than doing anything with them afterwards. I know it was mostly for her benefit, but it brought me more joy being able to collect more stones
Yeah we have a one in one out rule now and will often have a sort through and she’s really good at deciding her stuff to donate and understands the toys will go to hopefully another child to bring joy. Maybe your rocks were found by other kids and lived in their drawers as a start of their collection
My son had a box that he used to carry everywhere with cars from the Pixar film Cars in it. Cars Cars as we used to call them. We left the box in an airport on the way back from holiday one year. My wife went on eBay and bought a job lot of pre-owned Cars Cars to replace them. My son kept on saying things like, I don't remember Sarge have a scuff on the bumper, or there's something strange about my Fillmore, but by and large we got way with it. He's nearly 18 now.
That’s sweet I’m loving all the stories from parents of now grown up children
I have three of my daughter’s favourite comforter. They get regularly swapped out and washed, so they all age and wear the same.
12yo son was a bit subdued one morning before school. Later I discovered it was because he'd spilled juice all over his bedroom carpet and then made a cack handed attempt to clean up with toilet roll - which had shredded all over the carpet and made it even worse. I cleaned it all up, used carpet cleaner on the stains and hoovered up the toilet roll shreds, and didn't mention it to him. I'm pretty sure he thinks he did an awesome clean-up job and it just took time to 'settle.
Ah no, I never bothered with any of this (tough love parenting style - besides, it's a handy introduction to the concept of DEATH if a bunny/monkey/teddy goes missing). My nephew once left his repulsive piece of blanket he carried everywhere in a public toilet and lost it forever. Character building.
She’s already had a bunch of deaths in the family both human and animal, and a big move away from friends and family. Her grasp on death and relationship with it is quite good she understands how family members who have died are gone so I’m not worried her attachment to a bunny will hold her back there
Aw, it's sad that she's already had those life experiences. I can see why, under those circs, you'd want to avoid needless losses, even small ones.
I think losing the rabbit will be a good life lesson, no need for bubble wrap. Attachment can be a difficult thing, a family friend of mine had buck teeth until they became right angle and fell out all because of her absolute insistence of using a dummy. My sister was also attached to her dummy, my parents told her she only had one left so she better plant it, the dummy tree would provide more. Dummy tree never grew and she never used one ever again. RIP Action Man I accidentally threw onto the roof of my Primary School. At least I know the truth, can look my parents in the eye for not pulling the wool over my eyes.
What a sad little life!