I Overheard My 5-Year-Old Talking to Her Teddy Bear — What She Said Left Me Speechless

**I Overheard My 5-Year-Old Talking to Her Teddy Bear — What She Said Left Me Speechless**

There are certain sounds you expect to hear when you’re a parent of a five-year-old.

Laughter drifting down the hallway.
Feet thumping far too early in the morning.
The quiet hum of a cartoon playing while you pretend you’re not watching too.

What you don’t expect is to stop in your tracks because your child is saying something so calm, so deliberate, that it doesn’t sound like pretend anymore.

That’s what happened last Tuesday.

And I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

—

It was one of those ordinary evenings that barely registers while it’s happening. Dinner dishes drying in the rack. The smell of soap lingering in the kitchen. The house settling into its nighttime rhythm.

My daughter, Lily, had gone up to her room earlier than usual. No protests. No “just five more minutes.” She hugged me, grabbed her teddy bear—an old, slightly lopsided one she’s had since she was two—and disappeared upstairs.

Too easy, I remember thinking.

That should’ve been my first clue.
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