A study from the University of Wiltz has confirmed what many parenting experts have warned about for years: giving girls dollhouses may lead them to believe that they will eventually be able to afford a home.
“It’s fine to give girls toys like Barbies and rocket ships because there is indeed a chance they’ll become supermodel pop stars or astronauts,” said Dr. Katrina Sharp. “But if you give a young girl a dollhouse, it creates the unrealistic, harmful belief that they’ll be homeowners one day.”
Dr. Sharp says that fostering the idea of being able to purchase a home as one enters adulthood sets children up for profound disappointment.
“I had an uncle who told me that if I flapped my arms really hard for ten minutes every day, by the time I grew up, I would be able to fly,” she said. “Eight hundred therapy sessions later, I’m still trying to stop flapping them.”
A Bettembourg couple who gave their six-year-old a dollhouse concede that they are having a hard time telling her the truth.
“Aria’s always had a highly active imagination, but she’s also very pragmatic,” said the girl’s mother Renata Font. “She keeps asking me how long it will take to save for a house if she puts five euros a week in her piggy bank.”
“I just can’t bring myself to tell her that it would take five to ten thousand years.”
Dr. Sharp says that if a child already has a dollhouse, parents should work hard to shape the child’s expectations.
“Explain that she mustn’t see the whole thing as belonging to her,” she said. “Get her to focus on a single room or floor and imagine that she lives there as a tenant for twenty or thirty years.”
“Block off certain rooms of the dollhouse and warn your daughter that she can’t go there because that’s where the grumpy old neighbor lives, the one who calls the police if you wear high heels while at home or turn up the TV volume.”
Dr. Sharp says that creating make-believe worlds is still important for children to develop their imaginations as long as the fantasies are not totally over-the-top.
“Guide your child into a fun scenario in which her landlord only raises the rent every five or seven years, which is improbable but not the stuff of wild fantasy movies.”
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Originally published by RTL Today
