When choosing toys for our children, there are very few times we realize, and when we do it is usually too late, we do not share the same tastes for them as our children. This said that someone could say that it is obvious, it really is not so much and is even more serious when they are small and are not able to convey their preferences well.
How do we make purchases? Do we really think about the age and development of to whom the gift is addressed? Do we buy toys with the heart or the head?
What is the boy like?
It seems clear, when buying a gift, we should take into account Who are we going to give it to? That's what we usually do with adults, isn't it? Who? What are your tastes, your wishes, your age. It is true that when they are so young, it is very difficult to know what they really want (what I am going to tell you if I have a child that changes tastes as the window changes).
But it is important to give a child a toy adapted to their age. More than their age, their skills and abilities, since there are very significant differences in development among babies at the same time, so it is possible for a child to be attracted to stories with sounds while another prefers a fire engine.
It is important that a toy becomes a small challenge for our child, but it is not so good if the game becomes a frustration. A child develops his playing skills, we have seen him, but he can also get a certain type of toys. And we no longer talk about the tantrums that frustration brings about not achieving the goal. An example of this would be video games. Your qualification is not only that it contains violent scenes or not, but that it requires some skill control that a 5 or 6 year old child may not have, which would lead to excessive stress and not at all necessary in a game. If we see that our son reacts badly to interruptions, or his behavior is very different from what he normally has, it would be a good time to think about whether that game is right for him at this time.
Who knows them best? Well, it is clear that their parents and in the case of the little ones, their caregivers are also the ones who can best help us when choosing the most suitable toy. With older people you can always ask them directly, yes, my advice is that you do it with a catalog in front because, at least in my case, the explanations they give about what they want are worthy riddles for researchers.
We project in our children the child we wanted to be and could not
Let him raise his hand that has given his son the toy he always wanted to have in his childhood and never had.
Most of us probably raised our hands and surely several of those who didn't raise it were because the toy in question no longer exists. Isn't it our boy or girl that we have inside, who tries to cover those little scars that our childhood left us through so that our children can enjoy it? A very clear example, how many children of four or five years, when not younger, already have a console?
We expect our children to have tastes that we understand and are similar to ours, so for example we hope you like our favorite sport, our hobbies, flavors, etc. And we may be in danger of canceling their own identities. Unintentionally, we try to make our children in our image and likeness because it is in our field, our tastes, tics and hobbies where we feel safer.
"But who has this child gone out to?" We usually ask each time we see something of the own harvest of our offspring and subconsciously we review the family tree to see on which branch the fruit of our genes has settled.
To replace their emotional deficiencies with gifts
It is our daily bread, we have a life of adults that sometimes does not combine well with the agenda of our children. They sue us and we can't be there. And this generates us, to whom more or less, a problem of conscience and we tend to fall into that "bread for today and hunger for tomorrow" which is to give gifts for affection not received. He is distracted and seems to forget that we were not in previous hours.
What we all have ever done can become a dangerous currency in the future if your child makes accounts and only sees that if you are missing he receives a gift.
Perhaps a good gift could be to spend a whole day with him visiting museums, parks, eating out at home in that place he likes, trying to fight for a few hours our adult obligations.
Sexism
These days it is tried from some media that sexist toys are not given to children, that inequality between them is not encouraged, and that they do not misunderstand me, it seems perfect and I really believe that it should be taken into account, as long as this be necessary. Not because we give our son the ball that he has been asking us since the summer we are going to make him a future abuser or not because our daughter prefers a Barbie to the Quimicefa is going to be less clever in the future and for many Monster High he has he will not Stop being less feminine. And even if it were, it is not the end of the world.
As I said in his day a toy is not sexist in itself, but depends on how we guide it. We are the ones who should know if our son wants a toy because he likes it or because others expect him to have to like it.
Although it is not something that usually happens in children so young, there are times that they ask us for gifts not to leave the group, because they are expected to have one or feel self-conscious because that toy is a matter of girls or boys, or the grandfather He has said that such children do not ask for such things, etc. One day they come home saying that they no longer want to play with dolls because it is a girl thing or that they don't want the top anymore because only boys have it in school and they don't let it play with them.
Those are the behaviors that should attract our attention and efforts to give them enough confidence in themselves, so they can feel supported. Because what a child wants is to be with his children and many times if we give him that, the rest is just decorated.
Guide toys or that only serve one thing
A child's best toy is his imagination. If we give them a toy that can only be used in one way, we are limiting that infinite potential to a few lines to follow. Imagine that they give you a palette with thousands of colors but they tell you that you can only paint circles. A blackboard or set of blank bus-sized poster sheets of bus shelters is a great gift to stimulate a child's imagination. What better than to leave it on an infinite folio to create what your imagination likes in those moments.
As I write these lines, my little son has been playing with the cord of a pair of pants for more than half an hour using him as a bracelet, necklace, scarf, car belt, and I don't know what else because he still speaks in Sanskrit. Your dozens of toys are waiting in your room.
With older people it is always a good option to give away construction games, but considering that those that allow different figures are better, although nothing will happen if we give one to mount a truck or a police car, they will already use it as they want.
Play space
Experts tell us that the baby has to have its own play space, that it has to have certain characteristics and we who want the best, we build one within our possibilities, because as much as we strive, in our 60 floor square meters does not enter the tennis court that has the baby of the magazine as a playroom.
And once we have spent weeks modulating spaces to reorganize half a floor, it turns out that our son does not share our theory of pastel colors, vents and indirect lights and prefers to come to the kitchen behind us between the smell of batter, fluorescent and dangerous corners . Why? Because in the kitchen there is the adult who wants, in whom he trusts and the role model, because when children play they not only play, but they are learning how it is to behave in society and if mom, or dad, have gone to the kitchen is because we have to go to the kitchen, we play with our pans and knives and they, well, they with whatever they have caught on the road or in the drawers that are within their reach.
Ok, but what do we give this Christmas?
Well, personally I think you should leave your heart a little at home and try to use your head. Especially in these ages when toys are so linked to learning and development. Try to always give away toys adapted to your age, there will be time to give away that spacecraft of thousands of light combinations and above all stay tuned for the signs that indicate the type of toys that you like the most.
Do we buy toys with the heart or the head? We know, the answer is not simple.
