A woman in Wisconsin is making dolls that look just like the child they're meant for

Hindustan Times

a day ago

Playtime is hardest. Adults who grew up differently abled still speak with pain of sitting to one side, alone, as games, quarrels and friendships unfolded around them.
It's why Amy Jandrisevits's dolls mean so much to their little recipients, and their parents.
Jandrisevits makes customised dolls that look just like the child they are meant for. More importantly, they mirror that specific child's differences.
Some are missing hands or limbs; others have vitiligo or large birthmarks; still others come with a walker, wheelchair, feeding tube or oxygen cylinder.
Keagan Cameron is eight and his 18-inch doll, Chip, is like an older brother, he says, in notes sent to Wknd by his mother, Joy Cameron, a teacher in South Carolina.
Keagan has giant congenital nevus, which presents as large birthmarks across his body and a range of smaller spots, which he calls 'chocolate chips'. Hence the name of his doll; and his doll's appearance.
Keagan Cameron with Chip. Each doll is free. 'I don't like the idea of charging the families,' Jandrisevits says. So she uses fundraisers and crowdfunding campaigns instead. (A Doll Like Me)
Chip and Keagan go everywhere together: to school, to summer camp, to Disneyland, and to the hospital. 'When Keagan is scared, Chip is there to help — be it with getting an IV attached or just being able to hold him tight for comfort,' Joy says.
It has been 11 years since Jandrisevits began making customised dolls like Chip, through her Wisconsin-based non-profit, A Doll Like Me.
Each doll is unique and free. 'The figurines are meant to be extensions of who these children are and the love they have for themselves,' says Jandrisevits, 53. 'They're a reminder to them that they are not alone.'
Playing fair
Jandrisevits likes to say she was meant to be a dollmaker. She loved the dolls her mother Chris Davis, a counsellor and seamstress, made for her as a child.
As a student of social work, her final-year Master's thesis was on the power of play therapy. In the three years that she spent as a social worker at a paediatric oncology department in California, she often used dolls to reach out to and connect with children.
Amy Jandrisevits at work. (A Doll Like Me)
'They were helpful in explaining what was about to happen to them during surgery, or if they needed an injection. They worked in a way that a teddy bear or a soft toy animal didn't,' she says.
At some point, it began to strike her as callous and cruel that the dolls were all shiny and perky, with glossy hair and pink cheeks, while her little patients were going bald or healing from amputations or skin burns.
'I wished then that there were dolls that looked like the children, that would also make them feel seen. Unfortunately, there was nothing on the market that came even close,' she says.
Soft power
Fast-forward 14 years and Jandrisevits was pregnant with her third child and at a career crossroads, rethinking the kind of impact she wanted to have as a social worker. Around this time, she began to make Raggedy Ann-inspired dolls as a hobby, experimenting with different skin tones and hair textures.
A few months in, in 2014, a friend of a friend reached out. Her daughter had undergone an amputation. The mother had seen the dolls Jandrisevits was making. Could she make one that looked like her child?
Ryann with her doll. 'The figurines are meant to be extensions of who these children are and the love they have for themselves,' says Jandrisevits. (A Doll Like Me)
There is a video of Melissa Bittinger and her nine-year-old, Hope, unpacking that doll. It now has more than 12,000 views on Instagram (@a_doll_like_me). In it, Hope, crying, clutches the soft toy to her chest.
'It was the first time she had seen a doll different from the ones on shop shelves with their 10 fingers and 10 toes,' says Melissa Bittinger.
Hope would hold on to that doll for years, through college and a degree in psychology and social work. She is now 21, a forensic investigator and a child-rights advocate. 'The doll means a lot of things to me: strength, courage, beauty. All of which I have struggled with, as I struggled to embrace my limb difference,' she says. 'I can't explain how much seeing 'someone else' like me boosted my confidence.'
A ray of Hope
On that day in 2014, Jandrisevits saw Hope's reaction and something in her shifted. 'I wanted more children to experience this — to be seen for who they are,' she says.
A Facebook post by Bittinger helped. Within two months, about 200 people had reached out, and Jandrisevits got to work. Her dining table has been her workstation ever since. The family has had to eat elsewhere, she says, laughing.
McKenna with her doll. In 11 years, Jandrisevits has made more than 1,000 dolls and dispatched them to more than 35 countries. (A Doll Like Me)
In 11 years, she has made more than 1,000 dolls and dispatched them to more than 35 countries, including India, China, Romania and the Philippines. Parents, guardians, social workers and physicians are among those who have reached out with requests.
With a waitlist of 2,000, she tries to finish one doll every three to four days, but some can take much longer.
'One of my hardest projects,' she recalls, 'was a doll I made for a Syrian refugee in Germany. She had extensive burns on one side of her face. She had survived bombings, violence, fire and hospital visits. That doll was particularly difficult, not just from a crafts perspective but because of the knowledge of all that this child had gone through.'
Paying it forward
Each doll would cost about $100, if it were to have a price tag. 'But it never felt right to ask families to pay, because they already have so much going on in terms of expenses,' Jandrisevits says.
So, from the early days, she has organised fundraisers among friends and neighbours, or online. 'I love that people around the world get to be part of this and can feel that some child far away from them will have a doll like this because of their donation,' she says.
She has lately become more organised about her fundraising. In January, she launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise $50,000. If she meets that target, that's the next few years of dolls accounted for.
Some of the funding might go towards hiring helping hands too. 'Right now, children have to wait so long. I want to change that,' she says.
Jandrisevits hopes to one day be on the shelves of small local stores in the US as well. Not as a core part of her business model — she would like to stay focused on personalised dolls — but so that a child can walk down a row of shiny shelves and see that, even in the perfect world of make-believe, people with differences are a part of the plan.