to want my DC to only have wooden toys? (Or is this a case of PFB Syndrome?)

[LovestoLove]

I don't think I'm generally PFB - I want my child to respect adults, eat with no fussing/faddiness (or at least no reaction on my part), have no quibbles about the step, won't give copious amounts of juice/biscuits, won't give into tantrums, etc.

But I really have a thing about the bucket loads of plastic toys that I fall over when at friends' homes.

I love wooden toys/puzzles, books, cloth dolls, make-believe things, fancy dress, etc.

Is it totally unreasonable of me to ask parents, in-laws, and anyone else who's expressed interest in getting a baby gift to get something wooden/natural? I know wooden toys are generally seen as more expensive but I've found some on Ebay and other sites that aren't bad.

Or am I going to be seen as crazy? I'm 30 weeks pregnant by the way with DC1.

Tis very rude to stipulate what type of gifts you want imo - and people most likely give babies clothes/teddies anyway.

Just get yourself a lovely stylish wooden toybox to hide all the plastic tat in!

You will find that what to us looks like a tasteful cloth doll, to the child is a funny, horrible looking thingy.

Not all plastic toys are awful: think Playmobil, Lego and Corolle dolls, to name a few.

True Franca.

In my Playschool-watching days I thought Jemima was hideous and Hamble was beautiful.

I rarely shop in ELC these days because not only do they produce more plastic toys than you can shake a stick at but they also insist on colour coding their toys pretty pink for a girl and baby blue for a boy.

I admit they do a few nice wooden toys and there are a few other exceptions decorated in red and black, but not over a certain age. Their Happy Land gets a thumbs up from me, but other than that I?d rather search the net for individual designs, wooden if possible, that do not stereotype or play music, light up or talk back.

Play dough (home made of course) a cardboard box, a pile of garden leaves or a bowl of soapy water will help develop imagination much more than a blob of blue plastic that is supposed to represent a multi-storey garage- cheaper too

My dd 3.6 is getting a lovely Buzz lightyear for Christmas, it says 28 different phrases and even speaks in spanish, find a wooden toy that does that, pah you can't

YANB unreasonable or that unusual,

We use 'guided choice' with everyone, toddlers and grand parents.
So classic books (board for early years)
Unisex please might have a boy/girl next time
Quality not quantity - so a great wooden puzzle with little handles for small hands rather then six, one wooden trolley as a pram/cart/tow truck rather then three
One plastic, musical keyboard - so people can point and say you do have stuff with batteries and a high shelf to put it on when it get's a bit much
Ruthless editing policy and good adaptable storage so they get and play with the stuff they can see rather then getting fustrated and chucking the whole lot around

In real life don't say out loud no plastic but you can still think it Again not quantity, but quality and adaptability.

Actually, I don't agree with a lot of the sentiment on this thread.

I only have a ten month old, so am ill-equipped to comment as a parent, but I have years of working with kids of varying ages in varying settings.

In the early years, with the exception of duplo, lego and playmobil, children are pretty relaxed about the quality/texture/colour of most toys. They are just as likely to spend ages pulling a bit of masking tape off the back of their hands as with any toy, plastic or wooden.

For the very young, the sensory properties of toys override everything else. I know it's a truism, but simple, home-made toys are often the best when it comes to toys - a few straws bound together with twine, bubbles, musical instruments, laundry baskets, washbowls and wooden spoons, pine cones, ribbons, nappy boxes etc.

OP if you really want nice, natural toys in the first year, mix some "nice" wooden instruments like maracas with some plastic equivalents and some homemade. Hours of fun. You can feasibly limit plastic tat to playgroup visits/nursery etc for a long, long time. I haven't really bought a huge amount of toys that he hasn't 'road-tested' elsewhere (plastic or wooden ).

Don't worry about the school years yet! You will be long past caring about how the toys look by then, and really, your children will have formed their own preferences.

YOU may love wooden toys - before long your child will, without fail, exert pressure at the most inappropriate moment wanting the most hideous/useless piece of plastic tat which you will buy for the five minutes of peace that it brings.

'I cringe everytime I hear parents plan their parenting. There is far too much overthinking of parenting on mumsnet. All children are different, even siblings and they respond to different ways of parenting. It's not until they come along and you know their personility and how it changes as they grown older.'

I agree with bruffin-have some ideals but wait and see. You have to respond to the DC that you get , not the one that you want.
If you have a DC who adores Barbie then you are setting up problems for later if you get all superior about it-much better to let them get it out of their system and move on. I was very grateful for a cheap piece of 'plastic tat' that someone gave DS when he was very ill in hospital-it was the one thing that he played with.
If people ask for guidance on present buying, you can give suggestions otherwise it is rude to dictate IMO.

The balance is tipped in favour of wooden here - we do have some plastic but it's in the minority. Just make sure that the big presents: cooker, play food, doll stuff, train set, cars etc are wooden, that way the stuff you're lumbered with for years won't offend you. Let the plastic tat come and go, it'll get broken or you'll lose the teeny screwdriver to change batteries or similar within weeks anyway.But if doting grandaparents ask or if you're buying, buy the nicer wooden ones.
Except for Lego and Sylvanians. Accept no substitutes there.

I do hope that I am not one of the hurtful/offensive 10%, Loves - that certainly was not my intention.

Based on my own experience, I think that it is good to approach parenthood with both idealism and realism, and to know that whilst it is good to have high standards, it isn't good to have expectations so high that you beat yourself up if you fall short of them.

I believe that there is no such thing as perfection in parenting, and some people wear themselves to a thread trying to achieve perfection - and that's not good for you or the dc. For example, I was absolutely convinced that I was going to breastfeed my pfb - I had this vision of myself - not quite the perfect madonna (I had seen myself in a mirror ) but that I'd find breastfeeding utterly natural and it would work without a hitch.

I was wrong. Due to ds1 having jaundice, he was in an incubator and I was told he needed formula supplements - and I lacked the confidence/balls to get the support and advice I needed to carry on with ebf - so by the time we were discharged, he was on formula, and though I did try really hard, we never re-established breastfeeding - and I am absolutely sure that the feeling of failure this gave me led in a large part to me developing post natal depression.

Or as Libby Purves put it in her wonderful book "How Not To Be A Perfect Mother" - there are corners you can cut without damaging your child's wellbeing - dressing the baby in one of his brother's jumpers with the arms rolled up, and a disposable nappy isn't the end of the world, as long as he is clean(ish), warm, well fed and happy. And even a Madonna needs some time to put her feet up with a bottle glass of wine and a good book.

So have your ideals, but don't, as I did, beat yourself up if you don't live up to them all. And congratulations on your soon-to-be precious first born. You have got so many things to look forward to.

lol at blackwidow and inappropriate moments. We had a kindly older couple who used to mind the DCs from time to time, take them out in the buggy for an hour etc.
In church one Sunday, DS1 pulled a load of small pens out of his coat pocket and announced very loudly "look what i got at the bookies!"

'We use 'guided choice' with everyone, toddlers and grand parents'

What about people like me who never ask for guidance? I use my initiative.

Suepurleybilt, no not true, I have plastic tat in good working order that is 27 years old from when I was a child. Barbie, Robots, He Man the lot. We have an idealised image of how we want our children to be, but as they get older they become their own person with their own tastes and wants, and your wooden toys might not go down too well against Barbie or transformers, especially when they want to be like all the other boys or girls in their class and have the same things. Easy when they are babies, harder when they are of Primary school age. You got to allow your dc to develop their own tastes.

Ha ha I sympathise. I always loved the wooden toys when mine were little. Sadly, they always preferred the plastic-dinosaur-on-a-motorised-skateboard-with-four-irritating-guitar-noises (batteries required)- type toys.

Look at it this way - you'll be less upset when it ends up in the bin if you hated it in the first place.

It's probably not a good idea trying to impose this on those buying gifts for your DC. Somebody mischievous will buy the worst, most gaudy, irritating plastic crap they can find and your DC will love it more than any other present.

'I believe that there is no such thing as perfection in parenting, and some people wear themselves to a thread trying to achieve perfection - and that's not good for you or the dc.'

I am firmly convinced that the 'perfect' mother must be utter hell to live with!

kungfu - you have to strike out each individual word.

op - YABU. What we'd do in theory and what happens in practice are rarely the same with children, especially at baby and toddler stage. Adaptability is a great skill to develop to parent effectively and less stressfully, IMO.

Its impossible to say how you will deal with tantrums until you have your own tantrumming child. How you deal with it the first time in the comfort of your own home, guide book to hand, may be very different to how you deal with it on 2 hours' sleep in a busy shopping mall, having been kicked and punched and having at least 20 people staring at your child, tutting at you, assuming you have done something awful. < forces memory back into a dark recess >

On a lighter note, I also prefer gorgeous wooden stuff to plastic crap, except for the mentioned Lego etc. DD has a delicious
collection of Le Toy Van pieces that I allow in the living room. The playroom is full of the stuff I can close the door on. [hgrin]

I abhor football and all its accoutrements and swore it wouldn't feature in my life. Ever. DS, consequently, is football mad, plays every Saturday, wins trophies, spends all his pocket money on football cards and even < shudder > at games wears a - sssshhh football strip.

He is so happy. So I am happy because I love him. Thats what it all boils down to.

I thought this when I was pregnant with ds I loved wooden toys and only really bought them.
However my ds is 3.7 now and he still likes wooden toys he loves his wooden train track and trains and we've got his a wooden kitchen for xmas but he also loves plastic toys and tbh as long as he enjoys playing with them I am not too fussed :)

The best wooden toy mine ever had,with hours and hours of imaginative play, was the Brio train set.

'I cringe everytime I hear parents plan their parenting. There is far too much overthinking of parenting on mumsnet. All children are different, even siblings and they respond to different ways of parenting. It's not until they come along and you know their personility and how it changes as they grown older.'

I think this is a load of old tosh. If you can't dream when you're pregnant, when can you? It's part of the transition to being a parent.

I cringe every time I see a poster respond to another's dreams with "bless" or "you'll learn". It's rude, smug and frequently inaccurate.

I spent a lot of my pregnancy mentally preparing for this terrible siege I was to undergo: the total degradation of my humanity, having to sit around being mind-numbingly bored by the endless demands of a tiny tyrant, expecting I would be weeping into my cornflakes and ruing the day I ever conceived, finding it impossible to live up to any ideals.

It was hard, yes, but in its own way. So none of the "helpful advice" that made me dread having a baby was in the least bit helpful.

Perhaps one day "I'll learn" that parenting really is the awful, hideous, thankless thing it is made out to be, but in the meantime, I'm not listening to eye-rolling scaremongering. If I have to have a rude come-uppance, I'd rather have spent the time before it actually anticipating, rather than dreading, how my life as a mother will unfold.

It would be NICE, but its going make you look like a loon if you tell family NOW .

I was very keen on the treasure baskets/ heuristic play type stuff for DS, He had a 2nd hand baby gym adorned with scraps of fabric and bells and wooden cotton reels on string, a big cardboard box full of boxes and wooden spoons and pan lids, soft balls and bobbin skittles, a lovely wooden click clack track .

NOW, he is 4 and the dining room has a large lego train layout we built yesterday, his bedroom is home to another plastic train set his grandparents gave him and a plastic garage we got for free and metal toy cars ( the wooden one don't fit in the garage or on teh road mat) and various bits he has chosen in charity shops, under the stairs is a toy farm with plastic tractors( because the wooden ones are boring compared to "bruder" working models), cardboard animal shed and motley selection of animals from wooden to lego and washing up sponge hay bales.
BUT the living room is pretty toy free, just lots of books, a toy box with lid closed, a large fairy wand propped in the corner, a buzz lightyear on boys chair and a stray ( boxed) game under an armchair.

I guess I'm trying to say, go with the flow, chose what you like but accept that your child will grow up and have taste and interests of their own. The key to not falling over plastic toys is to put them away and cull stuff that is no longer used.

We do indeed have an image of how we want our children to be piglet, so do toy manufacturers and advertisers. If DD chooses Bratz or whatever she isn't picking at random, she's being told she wants it from a numer of sources. I won't be one of them.

Moderation in all things, if you read my post you'll see I suggest buying wooden for the big long lasting things that the OP will have for years or over many children and allowing the plastic figures etc to come and go as they do, depending on the trends or obsessions of her children.

I really don't think the OP is asking for support on a life-long veto of plastic, she's not going to be getting them wooden ipods in 2020. She's talking about early years toys.

arses I think I love you

DS had loads of lovely wooden toys when he was wee and I chose them all. Now that he is nearly two and therefore able to express preferences, he has a mountain of plastic tat.

There are some things that I just won't buy though; our local toy library is brilliant for that as he can spend a week with the toy from hell and then I can take it back when I'm going to batter him with it he's bored of it.

If you don't give a shit about what other, more experienced, mothers think, why on earth would you bother posting at all arses?

Frankly, if you don't want other mothers' opinions, there are an awful lot of other forums you could post on.

That is just 'no I don't care if you think I'm being unreasonable but I'm going to post in AIBU anyway' with a twisted lime. Same difference.