You know your kid does it.
That weird thing with his blankie.
Or lovey.
Or whatever you call it.
And after years of observation, I have concluded there are 8 major blankie styles.
1) The Rubber
This child has a particular spot on her blankie that she rubs between her thumb and pointer finger.
There is only one acceptable spot on the blankie that is rubable.
2) The 2-Finger Stroker
This child uses her pointer finger and middle finger and strokes her blankie between them.
3) The 3-Finger Stroker
A variation on the 2-finger stroke maneuver.
This child creates 2 folds in his blankie and strokes them between the pointer, middle, and ring fingers.
4) The Tag Stroker
Another variation on the 2-Finger Stroker. Instead of the actual blankie, this child strokes the tag on his blankie between two fingers.
Until its shredded.
And hanging on by a thread.
5) The Dragger
No stroking or rubbing for this kid.
He just drags his blankie around.
Like a caveman.
6) The Sucker
This kid sucks on a part of his blankie.
Until is is permanently discolored.
And no amount of washing can remove the smell from it.
7) The Flicker
This kid takes a part of his blankie, an ear, for instance, and flicks it back and forth with the finger of his choice.
8) The Thumbsucker Combo
This child sucks his thumb in conjunction with any of the previously mentioned moves.
I’ve got a Dragger and a Sucker/Flicker combo left.
How about you?
I have a dragger. Or a ghost depending on the game.
I’ll have to add another category…
I must have a special child…my 19 month old son likes to drape his blanket over his shoulders and walk around with it. Or if he is in an extra crazy mood, he will drape it over his head (covering his eyes) and walk around. The fuzzy ghost boy is funny until he runs into the furniture, which is at perfect forehead height!
Maybe your son and Jessica’s son are secretly related. I’ll add the Caped Crusader to the list 🙂
Mine is a rubber,two-finger stroker, dragger-sucker. Where exactly does that leave me?
That means you have an overachiever. Or that you should start scheduling the therapy sessions now 😉
My 21 month old daughter loves her blanket.. She named it her Mimi.. No idea where that came from but it’s a home made taggie and has her binkie attached. Which is making it a lot tougher ditching the binkie!! She’s part cave lady by dragging it but when she’s tired she’s a peak a booer.. As in she hides under it, overs my head with it, even covers our dogs faces with it. It’s one action that I know nap or bed time is coming fast! She’ll pet it too but the peak a boo is the most often blankie action in our house!
Okay. Need to add peek-a-booer too. Love the name 😉
I can’t believe it I just read and posted my reply last night.. Well today my daughter who is hooked on her blanket and binkie left it in her bed. I asked her 5 times if she was sure she didn’t want it cause we were going bye bye.. She left it. It was a long day so I tucked it in my bag.. But she didn’t ask for it all day. She didn’t notice it wasn’t in her bed at bed time either. I even got to wash and dry it with no tears!!!!!! So well see if she’s looking for it when she wakes up. It hit me.. Ur right seeing them decide their big enough to ditch the blankey tugs at your heart! My baby is on the fast road to being grown.. So sad! I love your blog u get me thru those times when I need reminded I’m not the only mom who isn’t perfect.. But what is perfect maybe perfect is the mom who doesn’t do everything by the book! I feel we know our kids n lives n if it works for our household that’s all that matters! Thank you so much.
Awww. This growing up shit is not easy! And I agree 100%. If it works for you, then do it!
No blanket for my 21 month old son…when is getting ready for bed he uses his shirt. And he is a rubber :0) I made the mistake of putting him in a onsey one day and nap time did not start off well! I realized my horrible mistake and did a quick change he was asleep in 2 mins
I think it’s so funny the quirky things kids end up doing…I guess you’ll never have to worry about losing the blankie. Just don’t lose the shirt off his back 😉
😀 am I the only one around here who has had a tag stroker? until one day little monkey decided she was done with her ‘tallu’ (her English-Maltese version for towel) and just like that, ditched it forever….
Number 3 was a tag stroker. He actually destroyed the tag from the amount of stroking he did. I tried to sew a new one on, but it just wasn’t the same 🙁
My daughter loves the tag, although in our house it is called a “go”. When she was little she would be looking for it & I guess after hearing me say “where’d it go” so many times, it kinda stuck. Now at 5, she still turns her blankie in circles looking for her go.
I also forgot to mention that at one point she thought she was doing magic, and put her blankie over a space heater to make it disappear, she almost had it, except I think she was trying to make the heater disappear, not the blankie, now said blankie has a big hole thru one side.
Maybe my kid is wierd, but he likes to pick fibers from the blanket (anywhere), and roll them up into balls, and flick.
At least he’s not into boogers. Tell me this is not precursory behavior!!
He may be in a category all by himself 😉
Don’t speak too soon on the booger flicking either 😉
Katie: good news…and bad.
My sweet kiddo was a blankie picker too, so your child is not totally alone in his blanket-behavior world.
And the other news, well, yeah…we’ve been trying to retrain the flicking skill into anything more productive than freshly dug gold..
Jennifer’s Lilly has 2 blankies exactly the same. Jen thought that she would be able to get away with a switchie so her blankie could get an occasional wash but that didn’t work as Lilly always knew when it wasn’t the “real” blankie-lol
No lovies here. Blankies and binkies and stuffed toys were provided in abundance but were completely ignored. Even thumbs never caught hold.
I did, however, have to hold them both for most of their first years. I must have been the lovey. :/ It wasn’t always great at the time, but I look back on it fondly!
Well then you never had that “Oh shit, we left the blankie at Target” moment. Lucky.
We’ve got a tag stroker/dragger
That’s a cute combo 😉
A sucker. I’ve got a fairly decent rotation going on to stop them being too gross. He doesn’t like it when they end up soaking wet and demands a dry one. Sometimes he’ll cuddle up and force one corner of it into my mouth, like an icky version of the spaghetti scene in lady and the tramp…
My 5 year old has 2 blankies. One is his “cold” blankie, which he dubbed when he was about 18 months, because he needed it when he was cold. The other is his cozy blankie. He goes back and forth between the two, but he’s definitely a caped crusader… as is my 20 year old. She ALWAYS has a blankie wrapped around her when she’s home. And her college roommates have verified she does it there as well. All hail the blankets!!!
I have a thumbsucker combo! BUT she sucks her thumb, while rubbing the blankie under/on her nose, and uses the other hand to shred little pieces of fluff off the blankie!!! She is 4.5, but only has it at bed time now.
My two year old likes to stick her finger inside the corner of the blanket where it’s folded and stitched when she’s falling asleep. She won’t use certain blankets if they don’t have that certain stitch spot.