When I was growing up, I was a pretty worried kid. I worried about everything. Of course, there were the classic childhood fears. I wondered if there were monsters under my bed or in the closet, if the sun was going to rise the next day, if my parents loved me enough, and things like that. Beyond that, however, I was scared of a lot of other things as well. I was even frightened of popular cartoon characters, as well as clowns, piñatas, loud cars, and people with long beards. A lot of people thought that I needed therapy, but my parents didn't
believe it. Instead, they bought me some worry dolls.
A worry doll is a deceptively simple toy, but it can really help a lot for kids. Worry dolls are small Guatemalan dolls, handmade, simple, and crude. They are typical crafts dolls that you can buy for a few dollars at many stores. There is nothing special about worry dolls at all except for their purpose. They are made for children to tell their worries too. A lot of parents never think about how flexible and powerful a child's mind is. Even just being told that a doll has some special powers – for example, the power to listen to your worries and make them go away – can have powerful effects. In my case, I constructed a whole world around.
I would sit there and talk to my worry dolls for hours. I would arrange them in a semicircle on my pillow, and we would all take turns talking. The funny thing was that my worry dolls would usually talk first. I kept them in a small bag, and some of them were scared about it. A few of them were worried that there were monsters outside of the bag, that they would not get enough air to breathe in their bag, and that I would forget about them..
Then I would tell them about my worries. I worried when my parents were fighting, I would worry about making friends, and many other things as well. I had a remarkably reciprocal relationship to my worry dolls, and I thought of them as some of my best friends by the time I was done talking with them. If you have a kid who has worries, I recommend getting worry dolls for him or her. It might not seem like much, but it can make a big difference. It certainly did for me.
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