Toys

People who care about either climate change or their child’s development – which I hope is everyone – should think about the little-discussed problem of kids’ toys. I’m frequently dismayed at their abundance. As an Early Childhood Educator, I can tell you that the research shows having a lot of store-bought toys is not only unnecessary, it’s actually bad for a child’s development. Having fun is extremely important, and free play is extremely important, but owning things that are designed as toys is totally unnecessary for those goals. In my 10 or so years of observing children, basically all I see children doing with toys is building stuff, playing make-believe (i.e. using them as props in their stories), or trying to take them apart to figure out how they work. They don’t give a pair of dingo’s kidneys what you or the manufacturer thinks the toy is supposed to be used for; they have their own agenda. So if you just give them a bunch of random objects you have lying around – pots and pans, sticks and rocks, old electronics, etc. – they can have just as much fun building stuff from stuff, using it in their stories, or seeing how it works.

It’s adults who are constantly making the association “kids = toys”. Because they keep making that association, people are constantly giving kids toys. Because kids are constantly being given toys, they’re constantly looking for more, and develop a consumerist, self-centred mindset. Almost all the conflicts between children I try to solve are conflicts over toys.

A lot of parents say they agree with this, but even though they don’t buy toys, or they only buy used toys, people keep giving them toys, and that’s where the abundance comes from. Fair enough, but there are still things you can do. Keep in mind that the environmental issue isn’t just the carbon footprint of the toys themselves. It’s the attitudes and mindsets that your children are developing, and they’ll still develop those from used toys or gifts. Consumerism and self-centredness is one of the biggest causes of climate change, so only teaching your children about the greenhouse effect and the larger effects of their actions when they’re old enough to understand won’t work. It will be too late by then – they will have already become consumerists.

You can’t stop people from constantly giving your child toys, but here are some ideas of things you can do: -Teach them to build their own toys, or repair broken ones.
-Give them incentives to donate, sell, lend, or trade their extra toys. (Remember reducing your consumer carbon footprint isn’t just about buying less or buying used, it’s also about getting the things you already own and don’t need into the hands of other people who need it, thus causing them to buy less.)
-Suggest that they have a yard sale and use the money to buy new toys they want. This teaches them the value of business. (Remember, being anti-consumerist doesn’t require being anti-capitalist.)
-Instead of just giving them an allowance or buying them toys once in a while, offer to pay them to do work, so they develop a work ethic. If you don’t have any work you need done that they can do, pay them to pick up garbage.
-If they’re frequently having a problem with wanting toys, to the point where they’re harming others in pursuit of them, take the toys away – not just temporarily, but permanently. Sell them or give them away (ideally, toys that you gave them originally). I can pretty much guarantee that, after the resulting screaming subsides, this will be more effective in the long run than the yelling / pleading I’m often hearing from adults in their attempts to deal with children’s behaviour, and it will reduce their number of toys, thereby improving their life.
-Require them to give away some toys before they can borrow new ones from the toy library, or make your house a toy library if there isn’t one near you.

I absolutely believe in a child-centred culture and child-friendly environments, but this doesn’t mean toy-centred environments. And a toy-free environment doesn’t mean a living room focused on adults, with a couple couches and a coffee table and not much else. A toy-free but child-friendly environment is an environment where there are things to explore and test, where science is encouraged. There are enough weird things around that children want to explore, and as long as adults aren’t needlessly restricting them from doing so, they’ll easily make their own fun. When my nephew was younger one of his favourite things to do at my house was repeatedly roll a giant exercise ball down the stairs, and even though I had lots of toys that was often what he wanted to do instead. An exercise ball is not designed as a toy but it can turn out to be more fun than things that adults think are supposed to be toys.

Again, it’s not that kids shouldn’t have things to play with. It’s that people should reflect on why they automatically go to the toy section of a store to find things for kids to play with, and reconsider the effect their assumptions are having on children’s development and on the world.