Research has shown that children who play often both solitarily and socially become more creative and imaginative than those whose exposure to play and toys is limited.
If you are going to take away war toys, then what are you to replace them with? Children need to feel courageous, brave, and assertive. They need to feel strong; that is the purpose of their play.
Once upon a time, soft toys were for babies. Now they're taken for granted as a feature of adult life.
One thinks of toys and play as an area of great novelty and potentiality where all sorts of responses can be developed. The fact that adults are allowing their imaginations to have activity through toy kinds of objects is a further reflection of the belief in the imagination of the adult mind.
The main point for me is that toys are incredibly more important than we realized.
Puritanical attempts to cure society by taking toys away from children are hypocritical and futile.
We had very few things. I had a couple pairs of jeans, a couple shirts. And same with my mom and sister. I think my sister had, like, two toys. We were living off of instant noodles.
We lived in just a studio apartment with just a room and a bed that came out of the wall, and my mom couldn't afford even a Happy Meal. We ate Top Ramen. I had no toys, and I had, like, two shirts, a pair of jeans, and that was it. But I had my mom to myself, and I remember it being the coolest period of time. I loved it. I really loved it.
I had really specific ideas of what kind of mom I was going to be and what kind of things I was going to provide for my child - even down to the organic, wooden toys Birdie was going to be allowed to chew on. Then cut to my daughter being obsessed with every plastic, 99-cent store toy.
I have a huge Lego collection - I have a really big Lego collection. We're talking pretty darn large. I also have a huge collection of original stainless steel Thomas the Tank Engine train toys. Beautiful little trains; they're my favorite thing in the world.
