Charlie sleeps with a little nubby stuffed Winnie the Pooh bear and has since he was really little. He doesn’t carry it around with him, he doesn’t talk about, but it is always in his crib and when I check on him he is often holding it. He sometimes throws it out of his crib and if i ask him anything about it or suggest we hug it or kiss it or something he seems rather nonchalant. So I knew he liked but didn’t think that he really cared that much about it. About 5 days ago it went missing. He didn’t really mention it so I didn’t think he cared. Then yesterday morning he started crying asking where it was. I felt horrible that I hadn’t realized he really loved it and needed it. We talked about it. Said I was so sorry that it was missing and that I didn’t realize how sad he had been and that we would work really hard to find it. He had been acting up in school the day before so I mentioned to his teachers what happened and they said that had probably really upset him. These sympathetic teachers leant him a Winnie the Pooh from his classroom which he was thrilled about.
Luckily we found the missing bear last night. I found it but left it under the chair and let Charlie “find” it. There was an expression of great relief on his face after it was found. But rather than hugging it he just threw it back in his crib. This morning he said to me “Mommy, know what the problem is. Need a new bear.” Luckily I had just paid abut $100 to have a replacement bear overnighted and it had just arrived so I gave it to him. He was really happy though didn’t really talk abut it and just carried it out to the car when we went to a birthday party and held it on the ride home. It was still in it’s plastic bag packaging and MJ said “Let’s take this off.” Then in an attempt to teach the lesson of don’t play with plastic bags said “It’s not safe for a bear to be in a plastic bag.” And Charlie replied, “No not safe. Not safe for dogs to be in plastic bags.” Mj said “It’s not safe for anyone to be in a plastic bag.” To which Charlie replied “Not safe at all. Dangerous.”