I still remember the search for Li'l Miss Makeup, the "only doll with makeup that magically appears and disappears with water." I got the last one in the store, acing out a poor man who was doomed to wander the toy stores of northern California (it was out at the nearest Toys'R'Us) to protect his daughter from holiday despair.
My daughter played with the doll for 20 minutes. Then she moved on with her life.
American kids have too many toys writes Ellen McCarthy, the mother of four, in the Washington Post. They yearn for the toys they see advertised, then grow bored and want something new.
There's lasting play value in games, bikes, art supplies and building blocks, writes McCarthy. The rest is plastic junk.
Her four children, ranging in age from 3 to 11, enjoy playing with couch cushions, boxes and sticks.
Compared to children in other parts of the world, American kids "are less engaged in the adult world — regularly helping prepare food, say, or care for a household," says Suzanne Gaskins, a cultural developmental psychologist. Parents create a "kid-centric universe" that's supposed to "maximize their development.”
American parents want their children to be happy, she tells McCarthy. “And not just happy in a contented sense, but happy in an active, almost hysterically happy sense.”
That's not the goal everywhere, says Gaskins. Mayan parents' “primary goal is that the kid is even-keeled — not particularly happy, not particularly sad.”
Toys that do too much for kids are boring. They're don't leave space for creativity.
Our holidays were very baby-centric. My niece requested no gifts for her 18-month-old son. She said he has too much already, and they didn't want to schlep more back to Minnesota. I gave my year-old granddaughter a play couch with geometric cushions that come apart as a combined birthday-Christmas present. My husband's new granddaughter, who's eighth months old, got the household objects -- a wooden spoon -- she normally plays with. Her parents figured she doesn't know the difference.
All three children have non-functioning remote controls to play with.
Years ago, I went with a public-health nurse to visit a Cambodian refugee family: Two parents, five children and a grandmother shared a one-bedroom apartment with another family. The nurse saw the children were playing with empty beer cans and suggested they use a wooden spoon and a plastic bowl. The younger kids loved it.
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