Let adults have their stuffed animals
We have already learned how to be adults. Perhaps we can learn to keep the child in us, too.
Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, we learned that growing up means leaving behind the toys, cartoons, hobbies, and little comforts that once made ordinary days feel special. But I still have a teddy bear, and I bring it with me almost everywhere. It comes with me when I travel, stays beside me when I sleep, and is there when I need something to hold after a particularly long day.
It does not talk back or offer advice. It cannot fix whatever is bothering me. It is, quite literally, just a stuffed animal.
We spend so much of our lives learning how to grow up that we rarely stop to ask what we actually need to leave behind. Maybe not everything from childhood has to come with an expiration date.
And it seems that more adults are starting to feel the same way.
The rise of “kidulting”
Being an adult does not always look as grown-up as we imagine. You can spend your day answering emails, paying bills, and making serious decisions, then go home and spend an hour building a Lego set with your stuffed animal sitting beside you.
This blend of grown-up responsibilities and childhood interests has become increasingly common—reflected in the growing popularity of what has been called “kidulting.” The term refers to adults enjoying or engaging with things traditionally associated with childhood, such as toys, games, cartoons, and collectibles.
Adults save up for Lego sets, hunt for Pokémon cards, collect keychains, line up for new blind boxes, and fill shelves with plushies and figurines. They revisit the cartoons they watched growing up and buy merchandise of characters they once loved. Some carry plushies on their bags while others proudly display their collections on their desks.
What makes these things appealing is not necessarily a desire to be children again, but that it offers a kind of uncomplicated joy that adulthood does not always leave much room for. Kidulting may simply be a way of remembering what we once knew instinctively—that there is value in play, comfort in the familiar, and neither has to be left behind as we grow older.
Keeping the childlike joy around
Maybe we have made adulthood unnecessarily serious, including what we choose to like. Somewhere along the way, we begin sorting our interests into things that are “for adults” and things that are “for children,” as if enjoyment itself has an age limit.
The stuffed animal becomes a decorative pillow. The cartoon becomes a “guilty pleasure.” The hobby becomes something we should only do ironically. The things we loved as children are allowed to return only when they have been repackaged as nostalgia.
Adulthood also comes with the expectation that everything we do should have a reason. Work should build a career. Money should go toward something practical. Free time should be productive enough to justify itself.
But sometimes we keep a stuffed animal because we like having it around. Sometimes we watch an old cartoon because we enjoy it. Sometimes we collect something simply because seeing it on our shelf makes us happy.
There is value in having things that ask nothing from us. My teddy bear is one of them. It has become part of the small rituals that make unfamiliar places feel a little more like home.
So let adults have their stuffed animals. Let us have the plushies, the silly little collections, the comfort objects, the cartoons, the toys, and all the other things that make an increasingly complicated life feel a little lighter.
We have already learned how to be adults. Perhaps we can learn to keep the child in us, too.
