Q: My nine years old son is very good at studies and is a social person. On his last birthday, he wanted a teddy bear as a birthday gift and we readily fulfilled his desire. But now he is behaving abnormally with the teddy bear. He treats it like a human being. He feels sad to be separated from the teddy bear when he goes to school. All the time he keeps hugging it. He says that the bear was born to his mother. Is my son’s behaviour normal?

A:It would be necessary to make a few observations around the behaviour of your child for e.g. behaviour changes during the last year at home or at school. Also, if there are stresses at school, developed recently, that he might be finding it hard to deal with. Please find out if his behaviour with the toy is a means of dealing with some emotional stress that he is not verbalising. It’s not important to classify the behaviour as normal or abnormal, it would be useful to find out what it signifies and address it.