LOL doll drama

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mom of boys here.

I had to google them.

DANG those things are CREEPY.

Maybe hang out with boys until the craze passes?

I have a daughter in 4th grade, and I had to google them.
For some reason, they are not the thing in DD's class. Unicorns, on the other hand..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In the early Pokemon days, or school ended up banning them from school property. Some parent exploded because her kid's $300 collection of pokemon went missing, that did it for the principal.

Neighbor's kids were happy because their mom had previously tried to get them banned on the basis of Satanic implications and did not allow her kids to have them. Neighbor girl said now kids wouldn't be able to make fun of her for not having them.

Poor neighbor kids. Forget Pokemon, their nut of a mom is going to ruin them.

For PP with Fortnite issues, all of those boys know the dances and silly moves, even those that don't play.

Not only boys.. girls, too.

[Anonymous]

My 3rd grader (boy) is going thru this now. All his friends are obsessed with Pokémon and at recess and after school only want to talk about/brag about/look at the cards. DS finds Pokémon boring but wants cards so he has something to do then. (To be clear, I’ve bought him the cards etc but it’s not his thing.). I think it’s just a phase to go through

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our DD's female schoolmates have been obsessed with these dolls since last spring. Our daughter has never been especially interested in them (she's more a stuffed animal person), but her friends' behavior around the dolls has deeply upset her many times since the craze began and seems to be impacting her self esteem. Several of our daughter's classmates have 30 or more of them (including multiples). The girls bring the dolls everywhere, and they can be quite disruptive. Our daughter was recently at a movie with a group of classmates, and she complained that she missed a large portion of the film because several kids were getting up from their seats and acting out LOL doll drama (which they usually do in baby voices). A group of girls was also regularly bringing the dolls to an afterschool class (where they were supposed to be learning but instead were distracted by the dolls).

The dolls are sometimes used as a measure of popularity ("people like Susie because she has lots of LOL dolls") and exclusiveness ("you can't play with us because you don't have one"). They are also an incentive to hang out with someone ("I'm going for a sleepover at Emma's, and she promised to give me one of her LOL dolls").

Has anyone else had issues with these dolls? Most other parents I have spoken with them don't see the harm in them and have gone out of their way to feed the craze. We keep telling our daughter that the girls will move on soon enough (they are in 3rd grade) and that friends should be valued for something other than the number of dolls they have. I have also tried organizing more activities with boys or with the few girls in her class who aren't into the dolls. Beyond that, I'm not sure what else we can do. Any suggestions?

My DD went through something similar at that age with certain toys. She just didn't get into them and part of it was she just didn't understand the game that the other girls were playing with them. It wasn't just about the dolls acting things out. There was this whole other layer of pretend play that went on top of it that my DD did quite get sort of like an inside joke among some of the girls.

I ended up just buying the toys in questions and giving them to my DD. This helped because once she actually had the toy and then watched some videos she understood a bit more what was going on and seemed to not be as put off by the other girls playing with them so much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I also have a 3rd grade girl, and we dealt with this last year with the Shopkins dolls AND LOLs. It was maybe a month into school and her friend group (who have been her friends since PK) had a routine of playing with the Shopkins dolls before school. They'd talk about it at recess (who was bringing what doll, what game they would play, etc.). The teacher banned them in the classroom, but that left before school and aftercare to play with them and lunch and recess to talk about them. DD was upset because she was being excluded due to NOT having Shopkins or LOLs (because they are creepy and expensive).

Honestly? I caved. I bought her a couple of Shopkins dolls and a couple LOLs because it WAS impacting her self esteem and social life. I (in what others may find a helicoptering overreach) also went to school with her one morning and talked to all the girls about how as I could see, there were more than enough dolls for everyone to play with one, so if someone doesn't have a doll one morning, someone else needs to let that person play with one of theirs so that we are not excluding our friends. I told her that for that reason, I'd sent 2 with DD - in case someone else wanted to play but didn't have a doll.

I won't say that they got over it, but it's now midway through 3rd grade and DD hasn't been bringing LOLs and Shopkins to school every day for a while. I guess they are into other stuff now.

Exactly what I would have done. A couple of dolls are not expensive.

Sure, that’s what everyone says and then all of that cheap plastic garbage ends up in our oceans and landfills.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My 2nd grade DD also loves LOL dolls, but I am not aware of them being used in the way that you described.

And boys are similar with pokemon cards and Yu-Gi-Oh cards as another poster mentioned. Several of the boys in my 5th grade DS's class started playing Yu-Gi-Oh this year and my DS didn't have any of the cards. So I bought him some. It was probably the best $50 I have spent all year, as it gives him something to do at recess everyday and helps him fit in (which was a struggle last year).

You may want to speak with your DD to make sure. I think many parents who support the habit and view the dolls as harmless are unaware of the social dynamics around them.

On the second point, what happened to running around at recess? If kids are sitting around playing with cards/dolls during school recess, I would tell a staff member and get that to stop. Children have recess in order to get some exercise, no?

No, they don’t have recess to get exercise, that’s P.E. They have recess so they can have some unstructured play/social/relaxation time during during the day.

[Anonymous]

Is this why my 4 year old asked for 15 LOL dolls for Christmas? We bought 2

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My 2nd grade DD also loves LOL dolls, but I am not aware of them being used in the way that you described.

And boys are similar with pokemon cards and Yu-Gi-Oh cards as another poster mentioned. Several of the boys in my 5th grade DS's class started playing Yu-Gi-Oh this year and my DS didn't have any of the cards. So I bought him some. It was probably the best $50 I have spent all year, as it gives him something to do at recess everyday and helps him fit in (which was a struggle last year).

You may want to speak with your DD to make sure. I think many parents who support the habit and view the dolls as harmless are unaware of the social dynamics around them.

On the second point, what happened to running around at recess? If kids are sitting around playing with cards/dolls during school recess, I would tell a staff member and get that to stop. Children have recess in order to get some exercise, no?

No, they don’t have recess to get exercise, that’s P.E. They have recess so they can have some unstructured play/social/relaxation time during during the day.

My DD is very sensitive and tells me the many ways she was wronged by her classmates each day, so I am pretty confident that I would have heard if the dolls were a problem. As for running around at recess, my daughters class does but not all the 5th graders do. Last year my DS mostly read by himself at recess so I consider Yu-Gi-Oh with friends to be an improvement

[Anonymous]

I like the idea to buy a couple and have one to share with a friend. It helps enable the inclusive behavior you're attempting to encourage, while also letting your DD know that sometimes you go along to get along. It's not uncommon to have to remind kids that it doesn't matter if you don't want to play X. If your friends are playing X and you want to play with your friends, maybe you play X. Or maybe you suggest playing Y and your friends choose to play Y, but you can't force your friends to play Y just because you want to play with your friends and you don't want to play X. And of course, reminding them that there probably are other kids playing Y or interested in playing Y, and it might be a good idea to look around and make new friends who share your interests.

IME, it's not that everyone is playing the undesired thing. It's that the desired kids are playing the undesired thing. There's something to be learned there from multiple angles.