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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To just … not have toys?

453 replies

giveupontoys · 26/12/2024 17:21

Obviously we’ll have to have some, but my DS(4) just doesn’t seem to play with them.

Christmas presents included a toy ice cream van and he just gets everything out and then it ends up discarded and thrown everywhere, so bits get lost and it’s unusable. This is the same as everything we get.

He has a few toy trucks / cars type things but doesn’t really seem to play with them.

I know people will say not to let him or to discipline him but he just ignores us … doesn’t solve anything.

I don’t know what to do really. It kind of seems pointless having toys if they end up unusable but on the other hand he has to have some things.

OP posts:
Thread gallery
6
EuclidianGeometryFan · 26/12/2024 22:08

What is it that you want people to say?

Get rid of all his toys.
Increase his hours at pre-school.
Spend the rest of the time out of the house.
If he is in the house, it is either meal time or bed time. Then he won't have any time to mess anything up.

DoughDear · 26/12/2024 22:19

I just wanted to say OP that it sounds like you're feeling really hopeless and defeated and I hope after some sleep you feel more positive and able to try out some of the suggestions.

I don't think you are a neglectful or terrible parent. I actually really identify with you but in the opposite way. I absolutely love being home with DS and can do roleplay and imaginative play for hours. It comes really naturally to me and I've always enjoyed playing with toddlers and young children in this way.

However I absolutely hate outdoor play. I hate how damp and dirty everything is and I'm severely arachnophobic. I know how important it is for him to be outdoors and I really do try and make myself ok with it but every minute in the garden feels like an hour and I just desperately want it to be over.

I so want to be one of those parents that's like a forest school on legs whose kids are constantly up trees and digging around in leaves and mud and walking for hours. I often feel really down on myself that that has not come easily to me, especially as I simply can't be as enthusiastic about doing that stuff as I am about the stuff I enjoy, no matter how much I take it. Both DH and I are homebodies and DS has started showing a clear preference for staying home with toys as well.

I do however know that I have to force him and us to get outside, be active and get fresh air every day. It's not comfortable or my preference but I do know it's important to have the balance.

For what it's worth I think it's fine for your DS to enjoy spending a lot of time going out, doing organised activities and playing more actively. I think preferences are ok and I don't think you need to aim to spend hours running trains around a big track every day. That's clearly not him.

I do think it's not a good thing for him to NEVER be able to play with toys and think throwing his ice cream can away is excessive. I think it's good for children to be bored and to learn to play. I hope that you are able to get to a point where you can have the odd bit of quiet time throughout the day where your DS can play in a way he enjoys and it's not a terrible stressful experience for you.

I know it's really hard. It's easy from the outside to give the advice but harder when you're living it each day. I do hope you're able to find some valuable ideas here and don't give up.

Gorondola · 26/12/2024 22:19

A friend of mine has two children and one is totally like this and same age as yours. When they are over at ours on playdate, the younger one goes for all the toys and throws them everywhere. It is like a hurricane. What we have found to be the best to keep him occupied is playdoh, he is able to sit at the table with us for a prolonger period and make things along the other children.

Ivymom · 26/12/2024 22:28

OP, you just seem stressed and overtired in your posts. My recommendation is to not make any changes or throw anything away for a few days and focus on trying to get some rest. Once you are in a better headspace, I would declutter and simplify your home as much as possible.

Start with whatever room you keep/play with the toys. If you have a dedicated playroom, can you get rid of any furniture in there? If not, can you limit furniture/accessories to only necessities. Then get some storage totes and pack away at least half of the toys. The trick is to find a balance between your kids having enough to occupy them and you not having so much clutter, you get stressed. Also, some kids do best on a schedule.

I have five kids and they are close in age, but very different personalities. I set up play stations when my kids were toddlers/preschoolers. At first, we had them in different rooms of our house, but moved to a house with a dedicated playroom. We didn’t have any furniture in our playroom room. We had a kid sized table and chairs in the arts and crafts station, beanbag chairs in the reading/book station, dress-up bins in another station and one of those racetrack rugs. One of our main rules was that we tidy one station before moving on to the next. Every couple of months, we would clean out the stations, pack away the toys and exchange them with the ones stored in totes. We kept the rest of the furnishing pretty spartan so we didn’t drown in clutter and clean up was much easier.

Partridgewell · 26/12/2024 22:53

I would try not to worry OP. They are all different. My DD was not interested in toys, ever. She just wanted to play with other kids. She would read on her own for a while once she could read confidently, but otherwise was just on the go all the time, unless watching TV (she was born before the era of tablets for young children.) She's now at Oxford so I don't think it held back her development. Both of my boys were more interested in toys.

Normallynumb · 26/12/2024 23:13

Would he engage in a simple game such as the orchard games ones?

mathanxiety · 27/12/2024 00:05

giveupontoys · 26/12/2024 20:12

😂

I guess how anything gets lost

😂

Right now I have given up. I’ve binned the ice cream thing and I’ll probably throw the waterpark thing too. It’s just sad somehow. I know lots of kids excited about toys and all mine does is destroy.

They get lost because the DS is left to his own devices and expected to know innately how to play with toys, how to keep sets together, and then put then away neatly.

OP, you need to spend time with your DS playing indoors with him and teaching him gently how to corral the toys when he's finished.

mathanxiety · 27/12/2024 00:15

giveupontoys · 26/12/2024 20:01

I can’t make it any clearer that toys with lots of small parts get lost, broken and missing. If you can’t understand that I’m not sure how I can make it clearer, sorry.

He’s not interested in drawing at all I’m afraid @Penguinmouse but thank you.

This happens when you take your eye off the ball. Kids who are inclined to be messy need to be watched if you don't like mess.

You can help him get interested in drawing or making marks using various media. His future teachers will be very grateful to you.

Have you ever tried having him draw a funny portrait of you? Put on something silly like socks dangling from your ears, saucepan on your head, etc, and he can draw you. You can take turns drawing each other and your older child can join in. Or bring drawing materials outside and have him draw trees, birds, squirrels.. If he likes cars, he could draw a race car. Or dragons, or whatever. An erasable drawing toy would cut down on parts. My DCs loved our Tomy Megasketcher.

Scirocco · 27/12/2024 00:36

giveupontoys · 26/12/2024 20:12

😂

I guess how anything gets lost

😂

Right now I have given up. I’ve binned the ice cream thing and I’ll probably throw the waterpark thing too. It’s just sad somehow. I know lots of kids excited about toys and all mine does is destroy.

Why bin things like that? Some missing pieces don't render the rest of a toy unusable and kids can still do great imaginative play with partial sets.

mathanxiety · 27/12/2024 01:11

giveupontoys · 26/12/2024 19:14

I think I’ve explained a few times that mess renders toys unusable @mathanxiety . There’s not much point to an ice cream shop with no ice creams because they’ve all been trodden on / kicked under bookcases / lost. But I am repeating myself. I do know children can’t play in a hovel, that just doesn’t work particularly well which is why nurseries are always bright and tidy and airy.

That's pretty rigid thinking around sets of toys.

Toys can become separated and recombined. Lego can be doll food, guns, a sorting game, etc.

Nurseries are bright but not tidy until the kids put everything away with the encouragement and guidance and modeling of the staff.
There is a place for everything in a nursery too.

I noted you mentioned you couldn't find your keys or the remote and there are shoes and clothes missing, or tossed around.
Do you have a dedicated shelf or basket for keys? Remote?
Why are shoes ending up in odd places? Clothes?

I brought up five DCs in a small house with hardly any closet space. Four of them were girls and when they were small we had endless Polly Pocket stuff, tiny Barbie footwear, board games with all their bits and pieces, Lego, Meccano, Lincoln logs, wooden blocks, tons of crayons, eleventy hundred naked baby dolls and all their clothes, stacks of paper, endless bins of markers, paints/ brushes, tea sets, baking sets, dolls house and furniture, toy kitchen, craft sets of all kinds (knitting, crochet, friendship bracelets, paper flower kits, origami kits, beaded hairpin kits, pinhole camera kits, make your own kite sets, make your own lipbalm/ earrings/ stuffed animals/ knotted blankets/ sand layers in bottles, and much, much more), Girl Scout gear. And that was just the 'girl' stuff. There was a massive Hot Wheels car track, large wooden train track set and dozens of trains, action figures, plastic dinos, farm animals, safari animals, Lego models, Boy Scout gear, a guitar or two, air dry clay, baked clay, kinetic sand, playdoh. Disco skates, inline skates, ice skates and guards, knee, wrist, elbow pads, helmets, bikes. Dressup box and costumes for various dance and ice shows. And books, books, books.

It was all recombined and adapted to different games. One day the guitars were dressed as zombies in the contents of the dressup box. Tiny polly pocket accessories were used to give extra ballast to Hot Wheels cars. The dolls house was occupied by numerous action figures with a stockpile of marbles as ammo. Endless combinations and permutations really, and nobody minded the odd bit missing.

When they were older, we also had tons of sports equipment (soccer, baseball, softball, tennis, swimming, hockey, volleyball, Irish dance, gymnastics, and all the crap that went with speed skating). Plus a Wii and a PS or three, an Xbox, and all the controllers that went with all that.

I spent time every evening picking up and organising when they were small. It was nice to have lots of storage cubes, and certain places were strictly off limits - the key drawer, the basket where the remote was kept, my makeup. By the time they were teens, they were trained to keep track of their own stuff.

saltandvinegarchipsticks · 27/12/2024 01:20

Sensory play? Sand, water, cornflour, paint, chalks, play dough etc. - roll your sleeves up and get right in there with him. You can buy rolls of plain wallpaper lining paper from places like the Range quite cheap, which are good for crafts.

tellmesomethingtrue · 27/12/2024 01:23

You need to play with the toys, with your son so he knows how to play.

brbg2g · 27/12/2024 01:34

Try some open ended toys.

Ice cream vans and paw patrol towers only have one function - to pretend play ice cream shops or to pretend play paw patrol. A train set is just a train set.

Children this age need things that have multiple uses and can be used to create things imaginatively.

I highly recommend magnatiles, a balance board, wooden blocks (or Lego/duplo), animal figures/peg dolls, play doh, kinetic sand.

All these things can be used in a variety of ways and can trigger creativity in the child. Magnet tiles are a castle or a car ramp, the balance board is a slide or a bridge, play doh shapes/letters/balls. My 3 year old made balls of play doh earlier and then stacked the play doh cups up and played bowling with them 😆

Definitely go for some more open minded stuff and see how he gets on. Take away single use toys (as in, they have one intended purpose or goal)

Also suggest orchard toys mini games at this age that you can play with him.

Yourethebeerthief · 27/12/2024 01:42

giveupontoys · 26/12/2024 18:12

I’ve tried toy rotation before but it’s hard finding places to hide them and to be honest I just tend to forget about them if they are out of sight!

We probably do need a big declutter, he is a December birthday so we get a load of presents then of course Christmas.

Problem with the emptying things out is you try to get him to put them back and he just refuses or walks off and it ends up getting difficult. (I have another child who loves putting things back so I don’t think it’s me.)

Get rid of as much as possible OP. I firmly believe the fewer toys, the better. But you need to keep the right kind of toys. And the right kind of toys are simply whatever your child plays with most, and is most engaged with.

We have very few toys for our 3 year old. As much as I would love certain toys for him (because I think they're cute!), I am not going to clutter up my home with things he isn't interested in. The best used toys in our house are open ended toys- magnetic tiles are a huge hit. You can make little houses/garages for matchbox cars to go inside or ramps for them to drive down. You can make little towns, you can make tunnels for train tracks, etc.

There are fantastic videos on YouTube on this subject if you search for "getting rid of toys", you'll see people who've run the experiment of getting rid of everything then only putting back what the children remember and ask for, or that they know will be played with. It's a revelation. I know posters are saying that dumping is a form of play, but for me my child only dumps toys because he has no interest in engaging with them.

Look carefully at what your child enjoys playing with. If he's more physically active and prefers gross motor play I would personally gut the toys to create more space in your home for what he truly needs: indoor trampoline, gym mat, wall bars, door frame swing, etc., whatever you can manage to fit in for him. In addition to that I'd have a few choice toys that would complement his toy vehicles: magnet tiles, few wooden boards of different lengths for ramps, tub of kinetic sand for diggers/dumper trucks.

Make space for what he really needs. You don't have to supply him with every experience. He goes to nursery 4 days a week, he has plenty of exposure to everything else. Outdoor play is far more important anyway and we also spend more time out of the house than in it. He's happier in the woods or at the beach than he ever is with any toy.

You are not responsible for providing every single possible type of play or developmental experience. Your home is your home and all that matters is that you are both happy. Endlessly clearing up dumped toys is not making anyone happy. Get rid.

Our toys cover the basic categories I think are important:

Building: some magnet tiles and some Duplo bricks
Vehicles: basket of matchbox cars. Basket of trains and tracks
Caring: teddies with clothes, blankets/play silks to cuddle and care for
Small world play: small simple dolls house, peg people, some plastic animals.
Sensory: kinetic sand, play dough
Misc: he has a treasure box that he keeps found things in like shells, stones, pine cones, odds and ends from party bags and so on.

That's it. Every type of play can be covered with what we have plus some imagination. Look up "the container concept" for advice on keeping toys contained by limiting the space they're allowed to take up in your home.

Good luck OP. If you can tune in to how your son really wants to play, things will improve and you can expand on his play by being led by him.

BeLilacSloth · 27/12/2024 04:16

Peaceandquietandacuppa · 26/12/2024 20:36

Wow. I think you need therapy OP. He liked playing with a blanket, your job was to teach him to pick it up off the floor when he’s finished but instead you throw it away because he likes it?? And instead of picking up the ice cream pieces with him and showing him where they go you get stressed and bin that twice too?

I suspect you have an active little boy who needs your input and would love you to play with him, but you don’t know how and just wish you had another child who plays obediently/independently like your other one does. But he’s a different child and you can’t make a square peg fit in a round hole OP.

How can you say something so unkind about someone you’ve never met? This is nasty. Nothing implies that OP ‘ wants a different child’. That therapy sounds like a really good idea, for YOU.

Willyoujust · 27/12/2024 07:26

Is he autistic?

SillyOrca · 27/12/2024 07:28

I just wanted to come and say it’s not just you, I’m lucky and my son does play with toys but I hate clutter and mess and find it really really grinds me down. His birthday was in September and we didn’t even give him our gifts because it was so overwhelming for him and us. Luckily my subsequent shit fit has resulted in more money/voucher/experience gifts and I can’t tell you how much better I feel!

Get rid of 50% toys and more general stuff and see how you feel then? He’ll still dump it out but there’s less of it? Or apply to Stacey Solomon’s Sort it Out and get them to do it?! Sending love and understanding

SprinklesandSparkles · 27/12/2024 08:12

Does he not know how to play? Have you tried open ended montessori style toys? Pouring things out is play, just need to teach him how to tidy up.

KneesUnder · 27/12/2024 08:42

Building: some magnet tiles and some Duplo bricks
Vehicles: basket of matchbox cars. Basket of trains and tracks
Caring: teddies with clothes, blankets/play silks to cuddle and care for
Small world play: small simple dolls house, peg people, some plastic animals.
Sensory: kinetic sand, play dough
Misc: he has a treasure box that he keeps found things in like shells, stones, pine cones, odds and ends from party bags and so on.
That's it. Every type of play can be covered with what we have plus some imagination

Maybe I’m showing my age but this sounds like loads. Not in a bad way- it sounds
lovely- but I wouldn’t suggest it was an example of a low number of toys.

Abracadabra12345 · 27/12/2024 11:47

I feel really sorry for you, OP. My son was like this and then he reached 6 and suddenly became interested in Top Trumps and Pokémon which were ( and probably still are) all the rage. He did have pretty textbook ADHD though.

As someone who worked in a preschool, we were happy to tell parents what their child played with most for such occasions as this! We as teachers would also be stretching that child's play as well as encouraging them to play with things they weren't so interested in and to work on lessening the unengaged flitting. Even with all our skills, there would be the occasional NT child who simply didn't play or like crafts.

I honestly think the 3-step stepladder a pp mentioned is a great idea and maybe a mini trampoline to bring the outdoors in. Big Mega blocks were a perennial favourite with everyone and Duplo - much better than Lego. And not too many pieces, I agree with less is more.

Abracadabra12345 · 27/12/2024 11:50

@Yourethebeerthief has written a fantastic post

NeverDropYourMooncup · 27/12/2024 12:00

It sounds almost as though the children are growing up in a hoarding situation, what with the climbing, tripping over things, not finding stuff - and with you wanting to throw away the toys.

It's very common for children and their things to be focused on as the source and cause of all issues with mess, the size of the house and rooms to be criticised, but not the adults or what they see as their property.

Dorothyparker010 · 27/12/2024 12:42

Obviously people have different tastes etc. but I genuinely can’t understand disliking Bluey 😵

I think it’s fine to get rid of a load of toys. my great at playing imaginative 4 year old will play with her toys, has all the standard stuff but will still prefer to pretend a box with circles drawn on top is a hob and oven rather than use her toy kitchen.

kiraric · 27/12/2024 12:55

@Dorothyparker010 I dislike Bluey too..

I actually much prefer Peppa! Peppa makes me laugh, has a satirical side to it

pelargoniums · 27/12/2024 12:58

I hate Bluey too. Sets unrealistic standards for parents being in good moods.