to hate toys that say "I love you"?

[cloudydays]

It's a minor thing, I know.

DD has a crib mobile which has a music-only setting (the setting we use) and also a "story" setting where a woman's voice tells little snippets of nursery rhymes and then signs off with "Goodnight... I love you...[smooching sound]".

DD also got some V-Tech baby toys for Christmas (not from us, from aunties and friends). There's a little bear with buttons on her tummy, and an activity button pressing thing with a dog on it. Both the bear and the dog proclaim their love and make smoochy sounds when you press certain buttons.

Maybe it's silly, precious, whatever, but I think it's weird. I would like my child to learn that love is a real, actual emotion (borne out by loving actions) that exists between living beings who have bonds of affection and mutual caring. It's not just a word or phrase or a way of saying the game or story is over. DD is too young to realise or care, but still I don't like hearing some disembodied electronic voice telling her it loves her.

Again, not that big a deal, but big enough for me to take the batteries out. Though that might just be to get some peace from the constant beeping. :)

TOTALLY agree. I hate 'I Wuv You' sentimentality at the best of times.

I have a similar (but less queasy) reaction to the recorded announcement at the station telling me it is very sorry for the delay to my train. Emotions/machine. Two different things.

YANBU
We have the same mobile, and the first time my sister looked after DS and put it on, she was really shocked too - she just looked at it and said "You don't even know me, you cheap little madam!"
I suppose I had become immune to it, but now I always think of my sister whenever I hear it, and laugh

Yanbu, but you know what's worse than kids being given them? Adults.

One of my friends once bought me a toy that said, not just, "I love you", but "I wuv oooo - mwah!". This was on a trip into London when I was about 17-18 and very into goth fashion. I had to stand on a train platform trying very hard to ignore the fact that the bag I was carrying was proclaiming it's "wuv" constantly.

(I would have chucked it, but friend was with me, and wouldn't let me)

So yes, aside from that incident making me not particularly keen on them, I agree with you about how "I love you" should be taught as more than a throwaway phrase.

I wuv you beary much!

Thanks for replies - glad to know that it isn't just me! Kaloki, "throwaway phrase" was just the expression I was looking for but it eluded me while writing the OP.

sterrryerryoh if it's the same mobile (bugs and a bluebird?) did you notice that the box it came in actually advertised that it tells stories in a "motherly voice"? Blech.

But the music and nature sounds setting is very nice.

YABU..have you not seen Toy Story? Of course your childrens toys love them...unless they behave like the evil kid next door :o

Although really, I bet these kind of toys get the rip taken out of them by the other toys for being so naff.

YANBU. Love isn't made of plastic!