Wait, isn't that me?

For a child, disability is often understood in simple but heartbreaking terms: difference, loneliness, exclusion.

- Sukanya Datta

Playtime is hardest. Adults who grew up differently abled still speak with pain of sitting to one side 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.

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 dolls like Chip, through her Wisconsin-based nonprofit, 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.