Forever Blankets and Bears

personalized baby blanket

My friend Peter said he’d never seen anything like it.

He was witnessing another friend’s baby daughter as she toddled past a blanket. It wasn’t her blanket, it wasn’t even a familiar blanket, it was just an old scruffy blanket that had been pulled out for guests to sit on as they enjoyed the waning days of summer on the back lawn ….still, in went her thumb.

It became a bit of a game. Peter would turn the little one around and send her past the blanket again. In went the thumb, again and again.

Her own blankie, it turned out, had been left at home. But so powerful was the comfort that a blanket represented, it didn’t matter.  A blanket was all she needed.

Peanut’s Linus van Pelt gave us our first mass awareness of a security blanket – a tattered little blue blob that he carried through years of cartoon childhood.  It turns out something like 60 per cent of toddlers hang tight to old blankets or stuffed toys for the security they bring.

It’s easy to see why.

It’s a scary old world when you’re little. Everything and nearly every experience is new.  The world is full of strange people, big noises, crowded environments and unexplored places.  There are dogs that bark and balloons that pop, loud voices and rushing traffic. It’s enough to make us all need a soft place to land and for a toddler, other than mom’s lap, there’s nothing softer than your own blankie.

Not only is a security blanket soft and tender, it carries its own reminders of what’s safe. The smells of home and the smells of mommy’s laundry soap are part of the package of safety. When that safety is portable, just a thumb and sniff away, it can give a little one confidence in a scary world, help them to cope and begin to develop their independence.

The comfort and safety that a security blanket represents lingers long after childhood – and the blanket – has faded.