Habit

Miss Molly (to date) has always been a bit of an "A" type personality.  She likes things a certain way, she tidies and fusses, she's a bit of a Bossy Bessie* and if things aren't as she likes them, well she loses her S&#t and fire rains down on our happy little home with epic tantrums that make Godzilla's attacks on Tokyo seem like a cakewalk.

Molly was a very high-strung and colicky infant with a scream that could break glass.**  As we stumbled our way though colic, spending hours to find things that would soothe her, we found a trick that still works today: If you rub the corner of her flannel blanket along her cheek, her thumb would go into her mouth, she'd settle down and most importantly chill out and calm down.  It was completely Pavlovian and we took advantage fully.

Molly and her elephant blanket.

Nowadays Miss Molly has taken the blanket to a new level, carrying it around for security.  At daycare, if she's feeling emotional, she'll go and take a blanket from the "dolly" station and carry it around herself.  Sometimes at the playground she'll wear it around her neck like some sort of nursery themed pimp scarf, at night and for naps she won't sleep without a flannel blanket (however we've very deliberately switched up the blankets on a regular basis to ensure that there isn't a regular favourite that's bound to get lost).   

According to some research, both social and inanimate object attachment is a standard coping tool used by children to deal with novel situations (although I'm not exactly sure how novel a trip to daycare is one year in). This can also be linked to separation from the parents, i.e. at night and nap time to deal with the separation from the parents and this starting up outside of nap time (which totally breaks my heart) when the kids started going to daycare and I went back to work. 

I think that there are two ways to look at this inanimate object attachment, either A) this is a healthy way of coping that she'll grow out of when she's ready*** B) We're allowing something that will have her acting like Linus well into her adult years and she'll be taking the remnants of a purple blanket covered in cartoon sheep to her therapists office every week.

So when (if at all) do we try to separate the girl from the blanket?  Or do we wait until other children start taunting her on the playground?

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*Perhaps I'm willing to say that this may come from her mother's side.
**This is the girl who at three months broke one of the baby monitors because of her voluminous cry.
***In future years we'll encourage her to take up running, yoga, painting or sauvignon blanc as a hobby to help her clear her mind and de-stress.  If she chooses sauvignon blanc it's a hobby she can share with her mom.