TORONTO -- A Michigan mother is encouraging parents to think about representation in children’s toys after her own daughter with Down syndrome was overjoyed to receive a doll that looked just like her.
Lindsay Filcik said a friend told her about a small shop called Hello Boho Babe that made a doll resembling her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Ivy.
“[It] honestly made me a little teary and just really made me realize how important it was and I had not really thought about that before actually seeing it. You know, just how important it is for kids like Ivy to be able to see herself represented,” Filcik told CTV’s Your Morning on Wednesday.
When she gave the doll to her daughter, Filcik recalled the look on her face.
“[Her] eyes lit up and she grabbed it and gave it the biggest hug,” she said. “She just absolutely adores it.”
Because the doll had made such an impression on her daughter, Filcik shared a message on her Facebook page in which she urged all parents, not just those of children with disabilities, to buy their children representative toys.
“Lack of representation also hurts those children who are represented. They grow up with the incredibly skewed perception that everybody looks like them. And anybody who doesn’t isn’t ‘normal’ and should be feared. That, my friends, is how racism and ableism can be perpetuated in our kids without us even realizing it,” she said.
Filcik said children like her daughter deserve to be seen.
“There are a lot of kids out there who have disabilities and who really deserve to be able to see themselves represented in the toys they play with and what they watch,” she said.
