I recently came across an interesting article, “Rethinking Children’s Play” in the National PTA’s Our Children magazine. The article explains how children learn through play, then traces the changes in playtime and toys from the latter half of the 20th century until today, significantly noting that media-linked toys can be traced directly to FCC deregulation in 1984. Now TV shows and movies can explicitly market to children.
The article restates facts we have mentioned in earlier posts, that brain development in the youngest children is best fostered by unstructured creative play time vs. rote learning and memorization.
According to the article, the kinds of pretend toys that are multi-purpose and unstructured, like clay, blocks, generic toy figures, and baby dolls, encourage play that children can control and shape to meet their individual needs over time.
Contrast this with the typical action figures or video games linked to TV programs or movies (I have to admit Destiny Baby is all about TV show characters from Nick Jr. and PBS Kids…at least they mostly have an educational focus!) The biggest problem, per the PTA, is that many of these toys just “tell” children how to play and use the toys to imitate what they see on the screen.
The best toys are those that can be used in a variety of ways, some of which your child will invent themselves! It’s good to have educational play interactions with your little one, but also let them have regular, uninterrupted playtime (away from the TV or DVD player!) and let them know that play is important.
You can get many of the best kinds of educational learning and cognitive development toys that facilitate your child’s intellectual, social and emotional development from the retailers featured on DestinyBaby.com. One of my favorite is the expert-selected, lead-tested and age appropriate gift series toys from eBeanStalk.com.
Whatever you do, make thoughtful choices about the toys and media you introduce to your child — focus on ones that promote true playtime, allowing them the fullest range of freedom and creativity.
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[…] on. As we’ve mentioned before, child development experts have repeatedly shown that the best kinds of toys encourage unstructured playtime and have multiple […]