Best gift for kids might be fewer toys
When Alexia Metz thinks back on the early years of parenting, she mostly remembers the stuff.
“I was living in a small condo and had twins,” she said. “I felt like the walls were closing in on me.”
Many parents of young kids may feel pressure to fill their homes with toys, especially this time of year. But after researching the topic with her team at the University of Toledo, Metz, an occupational therapy professor, learned that having fewer toys doesn’t just make parents less crazy. It’s better for kids, too.
The Washington Post spoke with experts on childhood development to understand how play helps children’s brains become more creative and flexible and learn important skills such as problem-solving and collaboration. One of the takeaways is that having fewer toys around leads to deeper engagement with each of them, which promotes creative thinking.
“What toddlers are programed to do is explore their environment and see what kind of opportunities there are,” Metz said. In a room full of toys, they’ll want to engage with every single one them — but that might mean they won’t engage deeply with any of them.
Metz, who also used to see patients as an occupational therapist, got interested in studying how children interact with toys after hearing concerns from parents that their toddlers never played with a single toy for very long. They would move quickly from one toy to the next, never sitting down with any of them.
Because of her background in neuroscience and childhood development, Metz suspected that perhaps the environment was the driver of this behavior. To test that hypothesis, Metz and a team of researchers had a group of toddlers come play in their lab. They had each toddler play under two different scenarios: in one, they offered four toys and in another, 16.
In a room with fewer toys, the toddlers sat down and engaged more deeply in play with each toy, interacting with the same item for longer and in more ways. They might first push a button, and then pull a lever. Then they would turn it upside down or on its side. If they were playing with a dump truck, they wouldn’t just dump — they would dump, stack, flip, make it gallop like a horse — in other words, pretend.
When there were more toys, the toddlers spent less time with each of them, and they tried fewer things.
Heather Kuhaneck, an occupational therapist and professor at Southern Connecticut State University who studies play, compared it to the experience of giving a young child a toy as a present, only to find that they’re more interested in the wrapping paper and the box. That might be because a box is more open-ended: It could be a house, or a hat or a ramp for a toy car. Simpler toys (and fewer toys) leave room for higher-quality play.
Kuhaneck said similar principles apply with older kids, too.
“For older children, honestly, the best kind of play is to be outside in nature,” she said. “Children will make up their own games and fun with the things that they find. It prompts their creativity depending on what’s available in nature that happens to be nearby.”