Thank god for this thread!
DD (age 8) has never been much into this kind of play, and I’ve always thought it’s something we ‘should’ be doing for some reason. She’s an only child, and not very good at entertaining herself, so won’t go off and play dolls, Lego etc by herself, so apart from Lego, any doll type stuff she’s ever had, like Playmobil/Sylvanians never got played with.
We always used to spend AGES setting up all the playmobil ‘lands’ but after about an hour of set up each time, we’d sort of sit and look at it and be like ‘er, what now?’.
DD is nearly 9 now, and I think getting beyond stuff like this anyway, however she does still like the idea of getting toys like this for birthday/Christmas, she still likes the idea of it, but is never interested in actually playing. Eg, she wanted loads of Generation Doll stuff for Christmas, which we begrudgingly bought, and now takes up loads of floor space, but she’s only played with it a few times.
Last week, I suggested playing with it all (through gritted teeth, as I just feel it’s such a waste not too), and it was obvious we were just doing it to humour one another.
The dolls were off to a horse show, and like PP, whatever I made the dolls or horses do, it was just right: ‘No Mummy, the dolls don’t say that, Mummy stop making the horses neigh, it’s a bit embarasing’!
We sort of rushed the horses round the course once, made one of them the winner, looked at each other and DD was like/ are we done now?
Despite this, she’s asking for more of these dolls for birthday 😬