Children handling your dolls?

It depends on the child's age, sense of care and responsibility. I never let little children to touch my toys and dolls. I trust my own kid, she is 15

 

Oooh....I don't know if I could do that. I'm a very cautious person when it comes to BJDs and I have enough trouble letting other people my age handle them. You people who let little kids touch your dolls are so brave, and I commend you and your extremely careful little friends!

 

I am new to the hobby. I'm researching and still figuring out what I want to be my first bjd. I do have a large dollhouse and make some dolls myself. I've noticed that I can't seem to keep my 5 yr old away from my things. He likes to play with them, though he has a billion zillion toys himself. Now I could put my foot down and say DON"T TOUCH MY THINGS! I am still concerned. What do you all do with your dolls to make sure they are save from little hands and do you feel you play with your dolls less because of this? I was just wondering what parents of young kids do out there that love bjds.

 

I am not a parent of a young child, but I am eighteen and live with my six-year-old brother. My brother adores my dolls, so keeping him from touching them can be difficult. I have talked to him about how special they are to me, how much money they are worth, and talked to him about how he could hurt them if he handles them incorrectly. It's worked pretty well, and he understands that he needs to carry them with both hands, not touch their faces, and to keep our pets away from them (and other things like that). I find no need to keep them away from the dolls altogether though. BJDs can be very fragile, but a lot of people, myself included, got their first doll and realized that BJDs can actually take some serious abuse before damage occurs, and I enjoy sharing my well-loved hobby with a loved one. I suggest just sitting down and talking about how you'd like the dolls to be treated and why. Knowing why really helped my brother understand. If that doesn't work, then I'd suggest just keeping them out-of-reach, like how we keep knives and medicines from small children. This is what I did, and hope it helps you in some way!

 

I also don't have children of my own, and never will, but maybe I can be of some help anyway!

My niece was 4 when she first "met" my doll. I explained to her that he wasn't a toy, that he was a very special kind of doll, and he couldn't be played with. He was just to look at, not touch. She was very understanding about it, asked me a few questions, pointed out things she liked about him, but never touched him. It was enough to explain it as "It's not nice to touch other people's things without them saying it's okay, just like you wouldn't want somebody to take your toy without asking."

Or, you could just keep them out of reach, if setting rules isn't enough. My mom had a couple of special dolls when I was little that we were only allowed to handle if she was around. She normally kept them on a high shelf in her closet that we couldn't reach. Sometimes, they would be displayed on her dresser, but mostly, they stayed in the closet. She would take them out and let us look at them or handle them when she was right there, and only for a few minutes at a time. She made it VERY clear to us that we were not allowed to touch them if she wasn't around, and we knew better than to sneak in there! :P

 

I have a 5 year old of my own and a 5 year old niece, my daughter plays with my dolls (under supervision) all the time. My niece isn't allowed in my room, but she has snuck my Reaa into her bed before (she's a little theif... stole $300 worth of cards). When they DO handle my dolls, they're very careful. We play teaparty with them once a week and the one break I've had was an accident my boyfriend had, he tripped and dropped the box a floating head was in.
it depends on the kid, if he's careful with toys, let him play with your dolls with you if you're still unsure, get a cheaper doll to start with and see how well he does, that way its easier to replace a part if there IS a break. So like a $100 or so doll rather than $800 XD

 

I'm not too sure on my answer for this one, but I have thought about it. My two nieces are 7 and 9. The older one tends to be very careful respectful and usually listens to what you tell her (although moving at a snail's pace.) The younger one... not so much. She breaks all kinds of stuff. They still don't have a good concept of monetary value of things, but I would hate for my sister to ever be in the position of knowing one of her girls broke an expensive doll if I did let them handle it. When I do get my first doll soon, I think I may just let them touch it while I hold it, but that's about it.

 

I have two little boys, currently aged 7 and 4 years old. The oldest was 2 1/2 when I got my first dolls, and the youngest...well, I was still a month out from his due date. All in all, they've been REALLY good about the dolls, only touching them and handling them when I'm around to supervise. The props on the other hand...well, I've had to give in and let them just have the cheap play-doll props I had to play with themselves to keep them away from the more expensive ones. My youngest also REALLY REALLY likes my dolls, and constantly wants to play with them when I do, so I picked up some really cheap (only paid for shipping costs) second hand Bratz dolls for him to play with instead. He pretends to paint them when I do face-ups, and brushes their hair when I'm working on my own dolls' wigs. It's really helped. My oldest just likes to help take pictures and snatches my camera during dolly photo time if I put it down to take pictures himself.

I've also got a really good, close friend whose nearly 4 year old loves our dolls, and wants to play, too, if we are playing dollies at her house. She's planning to get him his own Hujoo cat for Christmas. If I can afford it, and my little monkey is still interested in a 'good' doll of his own that can stand and pose, I'll probably look into getting him a Hujoo kitty or a Hujoo baby for himself. As he gets older, and still shows interest, he might even move into resin dolls like mommy.

 

My friend has two children, 2 and 4, who have both met my dolls. They both held them, but they were sitting down, and they were told about how to be careful with them, and they loved it! One of my dolls was wearing a Strawberry Shortcake shirt, and now the girls always ask how "Strawberry Shortcake" is, and whenever their dad shows them a picture of my dolls, they instantly go "Ooh, one of Arlo's dollies!"

 

Thank you all for your suggestions! My oldest son isn't an issue, but my younger one does like my things. I do let him play with my doll house props and would let him play with my bjd props (I get nervous with the glass little bottles), but these are some really great ideas. I do like the idea of getting a cheaper doll to start with and see and maybe get him a monster high doll to play with at the same time. more cheap props are a good idea too. I have some lps blythe dolls that I customize that I should leave a few of them for him. I also wanted to get a freya bjd kitty and that he couldn't really hurt. Mostly its the future resin dolls I'm worried about. Thank you all!

 

I would never ever ever let children around my dolls. In fact, most of the children that I know don't even know about my dolls. The only one for a while was my brother, but he's 14 now and couldn't care less about them. I barely trust non doll people to handle them, and most of them are older than me, but a kid, it's just plain out of the question.

 

I have a 6 and a 4 year old who love looking at my dolls, but they have only ever tried to touch them once, after that they just keep saying "mummies" and that's it..

 

I see 'letting children handle expensive items' the same way I see 'lending money to family'. You should never lend money to family if you can't afford to never get it paid back, and I'd never let a child handle anything expensive I wasn't prepared to see damaged beyond repair. The issue with children isn't that they're inherently wild and unsafe, it's that they often can't fully grasp complicated consequences. They can easily damage something fragile by accident, even when trying to be very careful, simply by not understanding the different ways something can be damaged. They can be perfectly fine 99 times out of 100, and only make a mistake that 1 time, and that's enough to leave you with a damaged doll.

And the last thing I want is to tell a parent "sorry, your child broke my $800 doll, I'm going to need you to pay for a replacement now" and risk them getting angry at me because their child broke something of mine. After all, just because something was broken by accident doesn't make it any less broken.

 

I'm not much around children. I have a 4 year old nephew and a 4 months old niece. I would never let my nephew touch my doll. I would freak out if I saw him holding it.

Though I remember when he was about a year, he saw my sister's first BJD and really wanted to hold it, she let him, and he held it with care...I was surprised. I thought he would just throw it against the wall, but he was staring at him and gently rubbing him...it was strange.

I still wouldn't let him touch mine though.

 

Hey Everyone,
So, just the other day I flew into Phoenix to help my cousin open her restaurant. I brought with me on my trip the newest addition to my resin family, Amalia, a beautiful grey skin girl. I just adore her and love to take her everywhere with me.

We went to the restaurant yesterday morning, and of course, I brought Amalia. I know I shouldn't have, but I wanted to. After some chatting and a quick tour of the place it was time to get to work. I went into the bathroom to change and after I was done I looked around for a place to set my doll where she would be safe and out of the way. I saw a bag of linens on the floor so I set her gently in it and threw my change of clothes on top.

My cousin has a young boy who is about 12 years old. The boy didn't pay me much mind during the day so I didn't really pay attention to him either. So I thought it particularly strange that the moment I asked if anyone had seen my doll, (I had gone looking for her in the place I left her, and discovered her gone) he immediately called out, "She's over there," and pointed at a table.

I'm pretty sure the color drained from my face when I saw her sprawled out on the ground face down. I rushed over and picked her up to inspect her. The little boy hung off to the side, clearly paying attention to me, but not approaching me.

Now, I should say that I don't like Amalia's hands, so when I noticed her pinkie was broken I was more annoyed than I was devastated. I did however look around on the ground to see if I could find her pinkie and fix her hand. While I was doing this; the boy walked up and asked me what I was looking for. I replied with, "Her pinkie," and he said verbatim, "Oh, it fell off?"

...Yeah, just hopped right off there and walked away.

At this point I was pretty positive that the little u̶r̶c̶h̶i̶n darling had done it. He acted as though he was concerned and looked around a bit until I stood up and said it didn't matter and walked off. I completely ignored his existence as I gathered the rest of my things and got ready to leave. At first he followed me a bit and then got a broom and pretended to be sweeping.

I said good bye to everyone and just before I walked out the door I asked him for a hug. He made a big show of throwing his arms around me and acting like he loved me, but just before I pulled away I said in his ear, "Don't ever touch my things again."

He made to laugh it off, but I just pushed him out of the way and walked out the door.

So, has anyone else had a similar experience? Does anyone live with children? Have they ever broken your dolls? I wanna hear everyone's story!

 

Hello fellow Floridian!

Well, I'm fortunate enough to not have experienced anything as bad as that (thank goodness), but I did have a few run-ins with the little humans. One was at a small meet-up at a park (long time ago). I had taken my doll over to some pretty greenery to get a few photos, and a small child with his mother walked up to see what I was doing. The mother was kind and asked me questions about my doll, while the boy looked on.

After answering most of her questions, I heard the boy tell his mother that he wanted one so he could have it skateboard. The mother told the boy that the dolls were probably expensive and not the kind to play with, and then the boy reached to try and grab mine. I was in the process of picking up my doll anyhow, so I quickly pulled her upward and away. The boy didn't look like he was very caring about the doll, just that he wanted it.

Luckily the mother told me thanks for answering her questions and led the boy away; the boy started throwing a fit because he couldn't have one. I don't know what I would have done if the boy had grabbed my doll.

Granted, I've had nice run-ins with children (the kind of children with manners and parents who actually keep an eye on them). Those were nice. As a teacher, it still astounds me how many parents just let their children run around without caring what they're up to. Ugh.

 

Oh, man. I would have been mad too! Fortunately I don't live with children. My youngest sibling is 14. I have a 4-year-old nephew and I hide my precious belongings whenever he visits. I would never let him near my BJDs and video games, especially because he seems too found of them.

 

I would let his parents know that their son broke your doll that cost $$$ amount, and you expect them to pay for replacement parts (or replacement doll if you can't buy parts separately).

And that said, you shouldn't drag your doll around places where there might be children who don't have good manners and know not to touch things that aren't theirs.

 

Well, you already know yourself that taking your doll along when you were meant to be helping your cousin and working all day wasn't the wisest decision. Dolls are just too expensive and too fragile to be taken out and about when you can't devote your full attention to their whereabouts so the best thing in this situation would have been to keep Amalia safe where you were staying so that you wouldn't be distracted while you were helping your cousin set up her business.

Children can be particularly curious about dolls, especially big posable ones like BJDs, so unless there's time to sit down with a child or young teen and talk to them about dolls and the hobby, it's probably better to save that topic for another day and keep the doll out of their reach.

In some ways you're lucky that the only part of her that was damaged was her hands when you didn't much like them anyway, but your girl was still damaged and that's really sad. Family harmony is still important though - you and your cousin obviously have a great relationship if you'll travel 2000+ miles to help her open up her restaurant, so I feel that it would sour things between you if her son tells her what you said to him, and there's a chance that he will.

Your cousin's son was acting quite suspiciously, but you don't have any proof that he broke your doll (and even if he did do it, it may well have been an accident he was too ashamed to admit to you rather than anything deliberate or particularly careless.) Whispering in his ear like that is quite intimidating from an older cousin to a 12 year old. I don't think your cousin would be happy you spoke to her son like that while asking for a hug. That's as much 'making a big show' as he did and I'm guessing you're older than he is. :s

I hope it all works out for the best and you manage to fix your girl's hand. Resin is thicker than blood, but family is important so I hope this encounter doesn't have any further repercussions :s

 

My 2 year old niece loves my pukifee bonnie, she calls her "Me Me's baby" (me being Me Me xD) I tell her she has to sit down and hold her like a baby and she does she will just sit there and hold her and just look at her. its really cute. ^^