To think children have far too many toys nowadays

[atthewelles]

Remember the days when your toys all fitted into a drawer instead of requiring an entire playroom, all to themselves? And you played with most of them everyday and loved them to bits and thought they all had personalities, even the toy cars? And how imaginative you had to be because a lot of things had to double up as something else eg your doll's cot became a cage when you were playing 'Zoos', or the bucket from your bucket and spade set became a soldier's hat when you were playing 'Wars'.
Nowadays playrooms are stacked high with toys that kids play with a couple of times and throw in a corner and that break if you look at them; and everything has a switch that makes it move and talk and flash lights at you; and Barbie doesn't need you to make her a wedding dress and veil out of tissue paper because you can buy wedding Barbie (and ice skating Barbie and gymnast Barbie and nurse Barbie and.....).

AIBU to think that children would be better off with a few well loved and worn toys and left to use their imagination a bit more when it comes to maximising the fun they get from using these toys, than having everything handed to them cheap, shiny, plastic and no imagination required?

Although there does seem to be a ridiculously large amount of different Barbie dolls around these days....

Hmm. Perhaps. I suppose I just feel licensed toys often come with preconceived personalities, accessories etc and sometimes it can be good for a child to create their own personality around the toy or, in the case of Barbie, to get a bit creative in providing her with a wardrobe etc.

Or maybe I'm jealous of her figure and sports car and lovely skating and ballet costumes

Sorry, I was answering your first post Purple.

Yes, I think Barbie will take over the world soon.

YANBU people have too much of everything these days. Me and DH have a chest of drawers each that fit all our clothes in, we have one computer in the house, one TV etc. Kids have one small box full of toys kept in the living room (they're 2 and 1) and another larger box in the bedroom and a small bookshelf full of books. There's still stuff that doesn't get played with! We move house lots and are skint so we get by with the minimum amount of stuff. I hate clutter and couldn't be arsed with tidying up loads of toys.

This is really interesting for me, only one DD aged 1.

I know children learn a lot through play, but I guess I have never really thought about what they learn.

I suppose that creativity / self-reliance / using their imaginations is one thing, but presumably there are all sorts of other things children learn.

I'd love to hear from those who know better than I what those things are. So far, DD mainly bashes stuff and takes things out of things and puts them back in. I guess she is understanding things like weights, textures, how round things roll, 'inside'/'outside' etc. But for older kids, playing with whatever toys they have, what are they actually doing?!

NB I was a kid once myself, just so long ago I can't remember!

Nonsense. Utter nonsense.

I was a total toy snob when I had DD. All wooden toys and natural colours.

Then someone gave her a Fisher Price toy, and it all went downhill from there. Soon we were swamped with plastic tat and, yes. Even Barbies.

The toy that my son played most with when he was a toddler was a set of stacking cups from Ikea. And a pile of cars.

I have seen no signs of the amount of toys equalling boredom or lack of creative play.

I have seen the Barbies set up as a 'family', and the Weebles brought out to be their friends, and the Playmobile put into place to join the rest of the crew.

We don't have rooms full of toys but we have more than a box or two, and my children are often to be found drawing and colouring.

Now they are older, they love to make Powerpoint presentations about their interests. My 8yo son is better at PP than I am, and my DD recently made a PP about Victoria Drummond, the first female Marine Engineer.

DS pretends to be Mario when he is outside playing, and DD has to be Princess Peach. The computer games and programmes that they use give them MORE ideas for playing and being creative, not less.

If we didn't do the whole class party ds4 would pretty rapidly disappear from the party circuit, it's petty but also how it works here. And actually the boys love them (or rather did, ds3 attends an autism school and parties are a whole other species there, we tend to go away as nobody likes them and it's all just done through a sense of duty, and ds1 and ds2 are old enough now to choose a family meal).

But yes; clear outs are an obvious solution, as is rotation. With 4 we still have plenty as they have different ages and levels (SN is a factor here) but it is largely managed by the God of Trofast and the fact once they get to 10 or so thhey prefer hobby related gifts- such as books, beads and art materials. We are drowning in books but that's a positive.

Anyway we're happy; we have to prove to the tip that we are not fly tipping as we use it so much but as long as we keep on top of the storage space we have allocated (a lot) so be it. My family were never going to do the wooden toy thing, and I certainly would never be rude enough to tell them what to buy so it was one battle I never chose to take on.

Detox- so much! social skills, turn taking, mimicry ( a key developmental skill), the very important skill of replacinig a toy's intended use with something else (and any toy can be used for that, I remember as a child turning a plastic push along car upside down and using as a pretend spinning wheel! Clearly I am pretty old).. Shapes, construction, the plain old concepts of mine and I like this so must care for it. What noises they make, how the bounce off walls (!), whether they float or sink, does thee cat fancy it, why won't it work- is it a button, does it need batteries?, what other games can I play with this. How do I negotiate with this toy to get THAT toy from my brothers.

Kid are scientists; and they will be whether they have a box or a cupboard full of plastic toys. The nature and amount of toys is unimportant as long as they're not bought on credit (!), available, safe and allowed to be used as the child wants and not just as the parent intends.

Wow Mme If they can be that imaginative using plastic Barbie and her ready made wardrobe, think how brilliant they'd be without all that tat cluttering up the playroom .

Okay, I'll get my coat.

YANBU people have too much of everything these days.

Yes, the easy availability and relative affordability of electronic goods and plastic toys really makes up for the lack of free higher education, employment opportunities, job security, affordable housing, and pension that previous generations enjoyed. You could just as easily argue that older people had too much of everything.

I always admire people who can only afford very few clothes but wear them creatively, add different belts and jewellery to customise them, take the buttons off a cheap top and replace them with funky ones etc. They are always more memorably (in a good way) dressed than people who buy complete outfits, ready co-ordinated, in expensive shops with all the right labels attached.
I think its the same, in a lot of ways, with toys.

A lot of children nowadays have a ridiculous amount of toys. I see playrooms that look like Toys R Us, with boxes and crates and shelves piled up with stuff. There is no way the children could play with half the stuff in there.

I agree that fewer toys that are played with frequently make far more sense and allow children to appreciate their toys more and to be resourceful and explore all the things they can do with a toy and how one thing can be used to many different purposes. They also learn to persevere with finishing a puzzle or jigsaw because they're not being distracted by a hundred other toys in front of them and to look after their toys carefully because they won't be readily replaced.

I don't think that means people have to buy fancy wooden toys and I didn't see anyone on here, including the OP, say that. I agree with her point that children really don't need roomfuls of toys to have lots of fun and to keep themselves amused. I also think that a lot of modern and often expensive toys that seem very exciting because they light up or move across the room or are based on a tv character are actually one day wonders because the novelty wears off very quickly and when you look beyond the flash and dash they don't actually stimulate the child's imagination. Those toys usually get thrown into a corner and are redundant.

I had a Sindy doll when I was a child. You just got the one doll and if she wanted to re-invent herself as a show jumper or a nurse or an acrobat it was up to you to sort out a costume using whatever bits and pieces you had around. Barbie would be horrified, but we had fun .

i only had one Sindy and played with it a lot, definitely used a lot of imagination. we didn't have a lot of toys (70's) as we had a small two bed house for family of 5. agree with the op, my kids have way too much and much of it is tat that breaks easily.

Atthewells
There is a fine line between being amusing and being offensive. I'm not a fan of sarcasm, tbh.

My kids are creative. Would they be more or less creative with different toys? I don't know. But neither do you, and to imply otherwise is just silly.

Every family does what they think is right and as long as the kids are loved and cared for, concentrating on the TOYS being the root of all evil seems illogical to me.

I'm not sure about too many toys, but I can say with utter certainty that my dd has too many rocks; I lose concentration for a day or so and half the bloody beach is relocated in her bedroom

I do agree though that on the whole society has too much in the way of cheap consumer goods and too little in the way of affordable housing, secure employment and good education.

MmeLindor, my children play like that too. Pretty much everything is a prop to spark play. Currently they are obsessed with really into Harry Potter. This means they read the books, watch the films, play the wii game, then run around for hours, waving wands, wearing robes and piling weighty novels into bags as their 'spell books'. They play as the next generation (Harry's children) and they do it endlessly. Dd has also appropriated into the game a toy copper kettle, stuffed animals and a feathered biro. I have to be careful when ridying up as all sorts of items of random junk are, in fact, part of the fabric of Hogwarts.

• tidying up.

atthewelles Tue 12-Mar-13 12:51:58
"Hmm. Perhaps. I suppose I just feel licensed toys often come with preconceived personalities, accessories etc and sometimes it can be good for a child to create their own personality around the toy or, in the case of Barbie, to get a bit creative in providing her with a wardrobe etc."

And do you think real children sit down meekly and just accept the preconceived personality? Would your children do that? Do they not invent their own worlds, their own stories, their own people? How strange.

I have spent a certain amount of time listening in to my children's play over the years and I find nothing lacking in imagination when compared to the play of my own childhood. Children will play what they want and the toys just have to comply.

I always wonder if my daughter has too many toys but then I go to friend's houses and am amazed at the amount of stuff they own! Playrooms and bedrooms along with stacks of stuff in the corner of the living room. Majority of it doesn't get played with at all. It's more an observation rather than a criticism.

I don't think it is necessary for kids to have that much stuff. On the other hand, I can see how it isn't really a massive problem.

I often get the impression that the 'well worn toys' thing is really just the same as the snobbery as just having wooden toys. This idea that imagination and delayed gratification is something only the middle classes possess whereas the lower classes bombard their children with electronic devices and inexpensive plastic toys from the local supermarket. I see this attitude a lot on Mumsnet.

My children have lots of toys and still come up with imaginative ways to play with them. Yesterday she was using her plastic doctor hammer to fix her truck. No need for me to buy toy wrenches, she's already a mechanic.

She had her play knife out today copying me chopping onions.

I knew the dcs would get tons of presents at Xmas from relatives so adjusted my buying accordingly. They got 2 presents from me.

My best friend had more toys than I did as a child and we both grew up to be creative adults.

Play is their way of learning. I'd rather them play with plastic knives than be taking my wooden spoon.

It's not sad that they've got lots of toys. If they have too many then some go to charity. Simple.

Any toys that promote imaginative role play are good (though they are not the only toys that are good).

Surely the matter of too many toys is down to the people buying the toys?

We used to play Barbie Borstal. It was kind of "Barbie Cell Block H". No idea where the idea came from as wasn't even allowed to watch Grange Hill, never mind PCBH. The one Ken Doll was the evil warden. The Barbie House was the prison. The Barbies spent hours hatching elaborate break out plots

On the subject of plastic tat, DS2 loves his plastic tat. He has collections of dinosaurs, moshi monsters, postman pat figures, friction cars.... He has ASD and is non-verbal and more inclined towards toys that make a noise a lot of the time, but just sometimes Jess miaows or Timmy bleats or Iggle Piggle and Upsy Daisy hug.

He also borrows steals collects shoelaces :o

Boredom has DS2 emptying out all the drawers, so clothes end up crumpled all over the floor. Bored DS1 is obsessive and highly destructive.

And wooden toys are great for drawing on walls and breaking windows :o

All this angst - if they play with it great, if its not played with give to a friend or charity shop.