Yahoo News The best gift for kids? Fewer toys.
When Alexia Metz thinks back on the early years of parenting, she mostly remembers the stuff.
"I was living in a small condo and had twins," she said. "I felt like the walls were closing in on me."
Many parents of young kids may feel pressure to fill their homes with toys, especially this time of year. But after researching the topic with her team at the University of Toledo, Metz, an occupational therapy professor, learned that having fewer toys doesn't just make parents less crazy. It's better for kids, too.
The Post spoke with experts on childhood development to understand how play helps children's brains become more creative and flexible, and learn important skills such as problem-solving and collaboration. One of the takeaways is that having fewer toys around leads to deeper engagement with each of them, which promotes creative thinking.
"What toddlers are programed to do is explore their environment and see what kind of opportunities there are," Metz said. In a room full of toys, they'll want to engage with every single one them - but that might mean they won't engage deeply with any of them.
Metz, who also used to see patients as an occupational therapist, got interested in studying how children interact with toys after hearing concerns from parents that their toddlers never played with a single toy for very long. They would move quickly from one toy to the next, never sitting down with any of them.
Because of her background in neuroscience and childhood development, Metz suspected that perhaps the environment was the driver of this behavior. To test that hypothesis, Metz and a team of researchers had a group of toddlers come play in their lab. They had each toddler play under two different scenarios: in one, they offered four toys and in another, 16.
In a room with fewer toys, the toddlers sat down and engaged more deeply in play with each toy, interacting with the same item for longer and in more ways. They might first push a button, and then pull a lever. Then they would turn it upside down or on its side. If they were playing with a dump truck, they wouldn't just dump - they would dump, stack, flip, make it gallop like a horse - in other words, pretend.
When there were more toys, the toddlers spent less time with each of them, and they tried fewer things.
Heather Kuhaneck, an occupational therapist and professor at Southern Connecticut State University who studies play, compared it to the experience of giving a young child a toy as a present, only to find that they're more interested in the wrapping paper and the box. That might be because a box is more open-ended: It could be a house, or a hat, or a ramp for a toy car. Simpler toys (and fewer toys) leave room for higher-quality play.
Kuhaneck said similar principles apply with older kids too.
"For older children, honestly, the best kind of play is to be outside in nature," she said. "Children will make up their own games and fun with the things that they find. It prompts their creativity depending on what's available in nature that happens to be nearby."
For Metz, her research on toddlers and toys, which she conducted in 2017, changed the way she parented her own kids - especially around the holidays. She and her family started focusing more on experiences, such as a gingerbread house-building competition or a hike, rather than "a bunch of stuff that later fills closets and cupboards and drawers."
Metz and Kuhaneck both recognize this isn't easy. "I wouldn't want to be interpreted as saying kids can only have four toys," Metz said.
But from both a sustainability perspective and a childhood development perspective, there are concrete things you can do to cut back.
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1. If you already have a lot of toys, rotate them.
Because of how quickly young children develop, last year's toys will seem brand-new. Your kids will be able to explore playing with them in new ways.
"Six months later, they're a whole new toddler. They have a whole new set of skills and a whole new view on the world," Metz said. "So this toy might offer them new opportunities to play that they didn't have last time it was out."
She recommended checking out a toy-lending library or trading toys with another family.
"Go with your gut because you're going to know your kid best," Metz said. "If they are looking overwhelmed, frenetic, disorganized . . . put things away for a little while."
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2. Buy toys that are built to last
Elizabeth Mahon, founder of the children's store Three Littles in Washington, D.C., suggests looking for toys that are made to last - not just in terms of the materials they're made with but in terms of how many things children can do with them. She suggested looking for toys that cover a wide age range, so that kids won't outgrow them quickly, and then rotating them so they don't get bored with them. That also cuts back on waste, Mahon said.
Kuhaneck said to look for toys that encourage many different kinds of play. She suggested blocks or other construction toys as a good example. "Blocks can be anything."
Toys don't need a lot of bells and whistles, said Sudha Swaminathan, professor and director of the Center for Early Childhood Education at Eastern Connecticut State University, which put out a study of the best toys for children's development every year for a decade.
"The toy may have been intended for a particular use, but then children in their innate curiosity, their creativity and their own developmental level will interact with the toy in ways that we've never thought about ourselves," Swaminathan said. "A stroller might suddenly become a grocery cart, or a block might suddenly become a telephone."
Swaminathan said many of these principles apply to adults too. In her own classroom as a professor, she often starts by asking her college students to do some free play to get into a creative head space.
"We kind of get to it without prescribed paths," she said.
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3. Prioritize getting outside
"Toys may be not so important," Kuhaneck said. Kids are resourceful and creative. "If they didn't have [toys,] they would figure out a way to play with whatever was just laying around outside."
Kuhaneck is not a big fan of screens or electronic toys - in part because there are fewer ways to play with them.
"Play that requires some creativity and problem-solving, things that are a little more open-ended," Kuhaneck said, will serve kids best in the long run.
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