waldorf doll after bitty baby

[cwheeler]

Hi,
My daughter is 27 months old and loves dolls. My mother wants to give her an American Girl Bitty Baby for Christmas, which my daughter has seen in a catalog and says she wants. I think the Bitty Baby is a sweet doll for what she is, but I'd like to get my daughter a waldorf-type doll in the future and hope that it would be a dear-friend-type-of-doll for her when she's a bit older. I'm afraid that after having a Bitty Baby, my daughter will come to strongly prefer the realistic style of vinyl doll, and won't want a waldorf doll. Even now when I show her photos of the type of doll I'm thinking of, she says she's not interested. Does anybody have any experience with this, or any insights? Thank you so much.

[E.V. Lowi]

I think you should follow your dd's lead and let her bond with the doll she selects. You can enlarge her circle of choices by having a few dolls available in the play area. Waldorf dolls must be experienced in person to be appreciated. Photographs do not do them justice.

[greenmansions]

We have both types of dolls and I like you hoped that DD would prefer the Waldorf doll. She is about 6 months older than your DD. She usually plays with the more realistic dolls but will circle back to her Waldorf doll periodically. I am a bit disappointed about that but have tried to let her play with the one she prefers on a given day. I plan to get more outfits and accessories for the Waldorf doll to see if that will help. I also found that her friends all have the realistic dolls, and to limit her to Waldorf style was making those all the more appealing.

[CuckooMamma]

My first dd was given a hard doll for her first birthday and was bonded to that baby for the longest time. It was a really unattractive doll that was gifted to her, and I just couldn't wait for her to fall in love with a nicer one. It took a really really long time (years) to get her to prefer a different doll. As a result, I took a different path with dd2 :-)

I purchased a Waldorf doll for dd2's first birthday. She loved that doll and still adores her at 3.5. we have a couple of hard dolls we had received as gifts for dd1 that I periodically stuff in a closet. They stay there for 6 months or so and then they ask for them again.

I made up my own rule as a result of my experience with dd1. No hard dolls are allowed in the car. I enforce this as a "safety" issue saying that we don't want anything hard banging around people's heads in the car. The girls have embraced this for years without a problem. I've also found that the plastic dolls are useful for outside play. I hate the idea of the Waldorf dolls being dragged through the sandbox and dropped in the dirt. But since I only figured this out this past summer(!) they really didn't have much exposure to the hard dolls for quite awhile.

Since dd2 bonded with her first Waldorf doll, she bonded with another one. By limiting the availability of the hard dolls, she really prefers playing with the Waldorf dolls. DD1 is very agreeable and transitioned out of the plastic dolls once I had enough Waldorfs available for her to play with and once again, limited their visibility.

I really dislike plastic dolls for all the reasons one prefers Waldorf dolls. I really didn't have the guts to go with that when dd1 was small and felt I needed to let her have the doll she had bonded with. If I had it to do again, which I did with dd2, I'd not have hard dolls in the house.

Unfortunatel, dd1 is now 7 and asking for an American Girl doll because everyone else has one. I'm only now working that through and trying to figure out what I'll actually do in terms of that!

Good luck. If you really want her to bond with a Waldorf doll, just buy it and she will. It's all about availability :-)

[cwheeler]

Thank you so much, everyone, for your insights and experience. That is very helpful.