We try to shape our children with gifts – in vain
Educational toys are supposed to make a child develop – but an influential adult is more important
One of the more traumatic memories from my childhood is that of the Christmas, some time back in the distant, dark 1970s, when my older brother was given a chemistry set. Our kitchen flared with combustible chemicals, the table was blackened, test tubes shattered and only my brother had goggles to shield him from the mayhem. It was even worse than the time my little brother got a bow and many arrows – but marginally better than the birthday when my parents yielded to my sister’s request for an air rifle.
I’d like to report that, as a result of the chemistry experiments, my big bro went on to be a Nobel Prize-winning scientist. As it is, he failed his chemistry O-level and his next experiments involved the fermentation of nuclear-strength homebrew. I was never given any young boffin toys, but am the only member of my sprawling family to have scored straight A grades in maths and the sciences. The moral of the story is: you can lead a child to H2O, but you can’t force them to become a hydrologist.
This is why I’m not too fussed about recent hand-wringing from the Institution of Engineering and Technology, which reports that 31 per cent of the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) toys listed on top retail sites and search engines are promoted as gifts for boys, while only 11 per cent are tilted towards girls. The Institute has therefore concluded boys are three times more likely than girls to be given Stem presents than girls. Even if that’s true (which would presume all adults shop as moronically as retailers presume), I’d say the bestowing of future Einstein toys reveals more about the giver than the child upon whom such largesse is, all too often, wasted.
As the mother of two boys, my regifting drawer is stuffed full of crystal kits, space torches, magnets and spider robots given by well-meaning friends or relatives. All of them have been resolutely rejected in favour of Lego. A couple I even bought myself in a mood of wild optimism. So I fully understand the intentions of most givers are noble, if deluded. We’re constantly told children should be encouraged to be rocket scientists, and even though no one we know finished A Brief History of
Time, or started that book on string theory, we persist in the notion we’re being model citizens when we buy an educational toy rather than a Nerf gun.
Have we learned nothing from our own disappointments? I never fully recovered from opening, at the age of 11, a bulky Christmas package from my legendarily generous uncle – only to find it contained hefty French, Latin and English dictionaries. Yes, I was a bookish child, but I yearned with every atom of my being for a Sindy doll stable and horse. I can still hear my siblings roaring with laughter as they clutched their own bounty to their chests and revelled in my misery.
As one joker I know says: “A good present should delight and surprise. You should have seen the surprise in my nine-year-old godson’s eyes when I gave him a sheepskin steering-wheel cover. I was delighted.”
Another pal still bitterly recalls being given a set of junior Encyclopaedia Britannica, despite begging his parents for a Snow Patrol Action Man. As adults we know that coveting frivolous gifts for ourselves need not undermine our intellect and ambitions. So why don’t we extend that same knowledge and grace to children? A Batmobile may not actively propel a 10-year-old towards becoming a world-class geneticist, but who’s to say it will hinder them either?
What most mums and dads overlook is the fact that children are most keenly influenced by their parents’ demonstrable obsessions and desires. In other words, it’s no good telling your kids they should love reading if you’re never seen deep in a book, ignoring all other stimulations in pursuit of the written word. Similarly, if a child becomes keen on science, there’s a good chance one of her begetters is mustard keen on making that spider robot too. In fact, they’re probably the sort of person who mends their own radio, tinkers about in a shed, and discusses Archimedes’ displacement experiment as they lob a cube of ice into your G&T. If, however, you spend half your life glued to your iPhone and the other portion watching
why would you expect your sprog to be ecstatic when they unwrap the Chem C3000 “ultimate chemistry set” from Fat Brain toys?
So I feel the Institution of Engineering and Technology is missing the point when it frets about gendered presents. It’s the giver it needs to focus on, not the gift. If a girl or boy has an influential adult in their life who presents dead beetles for a spot of light dissection, there’s a chance they’ll start longing for a microscope of their own. Passion is hugely contagious, while the ersatz variety leaves everyone switched off. It also leaves many a lad with a potato clock he doesn’t want and can’t palm off on his sister for love nor money. In fact, it’s probably time to fret about the unfair way we treat boys: why should they be lumbered with dreary educational toys, while the girls run off laughing with the Barbie Rainbow Cove Castle?