When I was pregnant I swore that I would allow my son only quiet, creativity-inspiring toys. I also promised myself that I would not let him watch TV. After reading several articles about attention deficit disorder in children, I became convinced that noisy toys and television were the main ingredients in the perfect recipe for raising a child with limited attention span and no imagination. But reality being what it is, my son is now a toddler and over the last twenty months we’ve accumulated an amazing collection of noisy toys whose only goal seems to be to encourage a short attention span. And every afternoon I am serenaded by cheerful monsters reciting their alphabets and numbers to catchy songs as my son sits in front of the TV for an hour in slack-jawed awe of the delightful wonder that is Sesame Street.
I’m learning that there is no black and white to this parenting job. Things are neither good nor bad and there isn’t much that can destroy a child unless it’s excessive. An hour of Sesame Street each day won’t hurt him, but watching eight hours of war movies every day could. A toy box full of noisy toys won’t ruin his imagination as long as he has other things to play with and he’s not staring at a Leapfrog toy all day as it mindlessly entertains him with lights and music. Something else I’ve learned as a parent is how much of what comes into my home is out of my control. After Christmas and birthdays I could easily stock an entire aisle in Toys ‘R Us thanks to the generous contributions from relatives and friends.
So the noisy toys have their place in my home, as does television, but when I’m not listening to the singing caterpillar or watching the letter “J” fly through a cartoon jungle on TV, I try to devote some time to coming up with alternative things for my child to do. And over the months I’ve found some great activities and toys.
There are three categories of creative toys for toddlers ranging from expensive to absolutely free. And with a little imagination and even less cash you can find great alternatives to the noisy toys that threaten your sanity and your child’s imagination.
The first category of creative toys includes the toys made of wood that you find in play sets at the store. These toys are more expensive than your typical plastic play set but they are well worth the money. There are traditional wooden blocks and puzzles, but the wooden sets made by Melissa and Doug are fantastic. The toys don’t light up or talk or make animal sounds or really do much at all, but they encourage your child to come up with their own ways to play with them. Our current favorite is a wooden pizza set complete with toppings and a wooden slicer for cutting the pizza into individual pieces. It’s fun to build the pizza, cut it up and then when the child becomes tired of it you can throw the wooden mushrooms and pepperonis around in the living room and simulate what would happen if a pizza were ever hit by grenade.
The second category of creative toys includes the things you can find at a craft store like AC Moore or Michael’s. In these stores there is one aisle devoted to the weird odds and ends people use in their craft projects like bags of multicolored pom-poms, felt letters, and even whole bags of doll parts! I’m sure the cashier must have wondered about my bizarre hobby the day I checked out with a bunch of colored pipe cleaners, an assortment of felt dinosaur cutouts, and a bag of doll legs. And here’s a warning before you go crazy in the bizarre hobby aisle: if your child is under three be aware of anything that may pose a choking hazard, even if it’s something great that you really love like a big bag of assorted googly eyes. You will feel like an idiot trying to explain to the emergency room nurse that your child swallowed a medium-sized eye or a small doll foot.
The last category of creative toys are the things you find around the house that aren’t toys at all but that your child will love to play with because they are real things that adults use. And as everyone knows, anything used by adults is an excellent toy to a child. I remember when my son fell in love with my keys. He loved to drag them around the house and jingle them in his hands and when he grew weary of them he would simply deposit them in a dark corner of his toy box. Or under the couch. Or in the trash. After several scavenger hunts for my keys I decided to purchase a toy set that were so real they were even made out of metal. But when I tried to substitute them for the real thing my son wasn’t having it. He knew they were toy replicas of the real thing and that made them undesirable.
Knowing that my son’s favorite toys are the things he usually finds in the trash, and his favorite pastime had become liberating items we’d thrown away when we weren’t looking, I decided to go around the house in search of potential toys. I found my old wallet with an expired credit card and insurance card for a plan we no longer subscribe to. I found an empty roll from the toilet paper and some address labels that came free in the mail. I had an empty pack of gum in my purse, the kind that has a sleeve and an insert where you push the pieces through the foil. I rinsed out a disposable Dunkin Donuts coffee cup and an empty bottle of pills. Then I took all the junk I’d gathered, put it all in a Tupperware container and gave it to my son. His eyes lit up when he saw all the great trash conveniently stored in a neat container almost as if he was relieved at not having to sneak it all out of the trash can when we’re not looking like he usually does. And then he played. For hours he played with his box of trash, studying each piece and coming up with interesting things to do with it all. He incorporated some of the trash into his playsets like the chip clip that he slid down the slide of his Playskool treehouse over and over again and the old water filter casing that he drove around in the back of his plastic dump truck. I looked over at him one day and he had address labels stuck to his fingers and he was deep in concentration studying the strange sticky paper and working at freeing it from his skin. He walked around with his empty coffee cup pressed to his lips pretending to drink “cah-cee” like mama. And that’s when I knew I’d stumbled upon something fantastic. Free imagination-building toys!
I still buy wooden playsets and blocks and interesting craft supplies. But now I find myself analyzing every piece of trash before I throw it away for its potential of being the best toy in the world.
