How does one “play” with dolls?

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I was reading an article in the newspaper about children playing with dolls. It mentioned that “boys play with dolls all the time -- they’re just named Batman, the Hulk and Captain America”.

I remember having a GI Joe doll when I was young. I received it as a birthday gift. But, I don’t remember playing with it. If I recall correctly, I took off the clothes and put them back on. I did that a couple of times. And, then put the GI Joe in my closet. I didn’t understand why the other boys were so excited about having a GI Joe doll. I also remember having little plastic army men. Occasionally, I would place them in position for war. Mostly, I organized them by type (bazooka, snipers, sharp shooters, etc.) and put them into plastic bags.

My sister had a cool Dancerella Ballerina doll with a thing on its head. I used to like to make it spin. It was entertaining, until it got boring.

Recently, someone was talking to my daughters about dolls. I remember them having a couple. One was an American Girl (a present from an aunt). It sat in a closet unopened. They also had Bratz. But, mostly they sat in a drawer.

So, now I am curious:
- What does it mean to “play” with a doll?
- How do most children play with dolls? Do they talk to the doll? Do they pretend that the doll talks back?
- How long do they “play” with a doll, until they realize it’s boring (and then decide to put the doll away forever)?
- Do children, as a group, play with dolls together? What does this entail?
- Is there a difference between playing with dolls and playing with stuffed animals?

What does it mean to “play” with a doll?

When I read this, I assume the authors intend it to mean acting out social situations with a doll. That's not how I played with them or the whole story on how my children do (more on that at the bottom).

How do most children play with dolls? Do they talk to the doll? Do they pretend that the doll talks back?

I've seen a variety of things done with dolls, including:
-organizing them
-toting them around without interacting
-pretending the doll is a baby (holding like a baby, putting a blanket on, putting to sleep, changing diaper, feeding, etc.)
-acting out scenarios (typically I see the child doing all of the dialogue--doll included)

How long do they “play” with a doll, until they realize it’s boring (and then decide to put the doll away forever)?

Depends on the child. Some tote the doll everywhere for years. Some spend very little time and never pick the doll up again. Lots of variety...

Do children, as a group, play with dolls together? What does this entail?

When I've seen this, it has always involved the baby type play or the acting out a scenario type play.

Is there a difference between playing with dolls and playing with stuffed animals?

Dolls may trigger *more* of the baby type play...otherwise, no, I don't see any major differences.



Our experiences

As a child, I allegedly begged for Barbies. When I got them, I spent lots of time organizing the dolls and the accessories. My mom is *still* mad about how I "never plays with them when I wanted them so bad". She has never accepted that organizing *was* play for me.

I bought my AS son a cheaper soft doll and my NT daughter an expensive soft doll (I made some unfair assumptions there). My AS son's doll is falling apart and my NT daughter's doll is in a box in the garage because she's never ever cared for it. My son has only really ever held his doll and carried it around everywhere or slept with it. He's never really interacted with it in anyway.

I had some dolls that got passed down from my cousin (who was 8 years older than me). I put them in size order. I don't think I quite understood the objective to playing if I'm honest. I was more interested in cars; they lined up better, with their near-square shapes and symmetry. I had absolutely no interest in the dolls. In all honesty I think they scared me quite a bit. I covered them all in a blanket, I hated their eyes. Now what goes through the mind of a typical girl/boy is beyond me, but I think they imagine the dolls as crying and as typical babies to which they look after, which I find weird. The age of kids who play with dolls is what, 3? 3 doesn't seem old enough to look after babies.

Oh, I collected all the shoes to the barbies. I put all the shoes into a box and lined them up occasionally. The dolls themselves were of no interest, but I liked the shoes.

I never especially liked playing with dolls, so I don't know. The only ones I ever really played with, were 2 small baby dolls I had that were just alike. I pretended they were twins, and I would ride them around in a Barbie jeep. I was obsessed with twins and always wished that I had one.

Dolls have always kind of creeped me out, likewise puppets or mannequins or any kind of clown toy. Ventriloquist dolls are the WORST, I can't stand them.

I feel like there is something really wrong about making a likeness of a human being and then playing with it like a toy. It's akin to voodoo. Seems especially wrong to me to have little boys playing with military action figures. I have read about the army doing experiments with voodoo to see if it could be used in warfare. They found they could indeed influence a person if they had a copy of that person's DNA (via a hair strand). I think there could be some very creepy agendas behind the production of action figures and other so-called children's toys.

Let's be honest, most kids put their dolls on top of each other, stuff like that.

... Don't they?

I was fascinated by the clicky-clicky mechanism inside some doll's legs and how their joints moved in general. Some dolls had removable heads which you could fill up with water and squirt out again. And then I liked to see how well they burnt.
I only learnt the 'correct way' of playing with dolls by watching my daughter. She would mostly set them up and have pretend conversations between them. They would go shopping and have parties and go to school. The dolls and stuffed toys seemed interchangeable. Practising inclusion, I guess,

I don't really see a specific ''way'' of how a child plays with a doll. I'm not one of those people that think ''NT kids play with dolls this way, Aspie kids play with dolls that way, Down's Syndrome kids play with dolls the other way...'' and so on. All children are different, one NT kid can be seen playing with a doll in a unique way to another NT kid. When my cousin was younger he used to bit berries from a bush in the garden and squash the berries on to his Action Man figure to make out it was blood, and he said it's something he made up himself. He got rather attached to that toy actually, and told me it was a toy he only used in his ''me time'', and wouldn't let his mates play with it. He's 14 now and haven't heard him mention his favourite Action Man figure for a few years.


But anyway, I played with dolls as a child. I remember I got some Barbie dolls for my 5th birthday, and somehow a lot of Barbie accessories accumulated, and I used to pretend the dolls were students at High School and were getting ready for proms. I don't know where I got that play from, as I never knew anyone from a High School back then or how High School kids functioned, being so I was only little.
As I got a bit older I collected those Betty Spaghetti dolls what were all the rage when I was about 8 or 9. I even had a baby Betty Spaghetti, and obviously pretended she was one of the other's baby. Playing with dolls was better when there was other children to play with, because I seemed to get too distracted on to other things when playing with these things myself.

I never really cared for an actual doll what you feed, change, etc. I used my favourite teddy bear to be the ''baby''. When I was about 3 or 4 I got a set of baby accessories you use for a doll, but used them for my teddy bear instead. I also got a toy pushchair, and wrapped my teddy bear up to keep him warm then put him into the pushchair and walked up the town with my mum, with the teddy bear in the pushchair. My mum remembers once when she was doing the shopping, and I instead of whining and demanding like most 4-year-olds typically do, I just said, ''Mummy, Teddy's bored'', and I lifted him out of the pushchair and carried him around the shop, showing him all the different items on the shelves. Then my mum asked, ''is Teddy OK now?'' And I said yes, and she said, ''good, because I'm almost done!'' Then I said to my teddy bear, ''you will have to go back into the pushchair now'', and put him back into the pushchair. Then an old lady smiled and thought I was really cute.

Those were the days.

- What does it mean to “play” with a doll?

Brushing their hair, dressing them, making them go shopping and driving a car, pushing them in a doll stroller, feeding them a bottle, making them sit in a chair while you do your fake tea party, what else?

- How do most children play with dolls? Do they talk to the doll? Do they pretend that the doll talks back?

Yes to both.

- How long do they “play” with a doll, until they realize it’s boring (and then decide to put the doll away forever)?

I have no idea.

- Do children, as a group, play with dolls together? What does this entail?

Yes. It's also a form of socializing IMO.

- Is there a difference between playing with dolls and playing with stuffed animals?

I can't see any difference.


I think I played with dolls the normal way. I mostly played with Barbies so I always pretended they lived in a house and I would sometimes make the mom be mean or make the kid dolls be mean to each other, I also played Marry Poppins where the kids had to clean their rooms after I messed them up. I also did reinactments, pretended they talked to each other, I would make them wear nighties to bed at night and be in their own beds as if they are real people. I also hated their long hair so I would cut it off and make it short and whenever their heads fell off, I would put them back on. I also did bathroom stuff with them too.

With baby dolls, I would push them in a stroller and rock a doll to sleep and I also talked to them too and gave them a bottle.

I never really engaged in pretend play either. I mostly had a preference for Baby Annabelle and Baby Born dolls, and they were generally just "night time buddies"-much like a stuffed toy you take to bed. I never really played with them, they just sat as decoration on my bed during the day. I had no interest in "playing" with toys, I was more interested in the mechanisms, like the wheels or the rotational limbs etc tbh.

Yes, that's what I did too.

In fact I made everything socially interact, not just dolls. I even made my jungle animal figures talk to each other like civilized people, instead of wild animals fighting.

I basically made up plays in my head and used the dolls to act them out. Usually the story involved one of the dolls being secretly an alien/android/vampire/etc.

I guess the key thing here, is being social with the doll? I am also guessing (based upon the other comments in the thread) that, perhaps, it doesn't matter what object you are using (doll, stuffed animal, etc.). The key is using it within a social context.

I wonder if there is a social context when playing with little, plastic army men. Or, is it really simply about the green killing the gray? LOL.

I remember that I used to play a lot with Lego (and erector sets and other similar stuff). However, I was never pretending to be human. I was always pretending to be the object itself. As an example, I would build the train track out of Lego and drive the train around the track. I was the train. Or perhaps I would build little spaceships and fly around. Now, that was fun.

When I was a child there were no adult type dolls like Barbie dolls. I was 12 or 13 when I saw one for the first time at a neighbor's house, it was a new concept. I thought it was ugly. I didn't like it.
Stuffed animals were usually given to babies and not older children. I didn't have any but I would have loved them. I loved real animals.
Today's market is flooded with all kinds of stuffed animals from Disney movies and such. There wasn't much of that when I was a kid.
I always got dolls for Christmas and my birthday. I dressed and displayed the smaller dolls. The baby dolls were dressed up in baby clothes and put in a doll crib and I sometimes carried them around with me.
I loved my dolls and I loved my baby brothers.
My baby brothers liked my dolls. My parents got them their own dolls because I didn't like them messing with mine.
I have an NT relative who didn't like dolls and thought they were creepy, but she loves stuffed animals. She has excellent social skills in spite of not playing with dolls.

I never really played with dolls, either. I like dressing Barbie----but, it was cuz I liked fashion, and creating different outfits, for her----I didn't do the pretending she was going on a date thing, or whatever.

I had another doll that I used to swing-around by her hair----THAT was fun!!

I like cars, better----I had a VW Bug, and a Chevy Chevelle----BEST toys, EVER!!

I always would rather MAKE stuff. I had a babysitter, whose kids had a Lincoln Log set----I wanted one of those, so badly; but, we couldn't afford it. I got alot of Christmas ornament-making kits----which was just fine, cuz I like crafts, sewing, etc.

In answer to a couple of your OTHER questions: I've seen kids play with dolls, and they talk to them, and sometimes pretend they've (the dolls) talked back to them. They do alot of pretending that the dolls are doing stuff, like others have mentioned, here. Also, I think kids, sometimes, play with stuffed animals a bit the same way, in that they pretend the animal is doing whatever the animal would do, if it was real.

...Yeah...........' !