Choosing Toys for Children
Choosing toys for children can be exciting but also a little challenging.
A lot will depend upon your relationship with the child, the child’s age and to some extent, your own (or the parents’) socio-political views.
Some generic good ideas when choosing toys for children
Almost all children, once they’re more than a few months old, welcome toys that will challenge them.
Babies love pushing a ball on the floor if it makes a noise and even pre-toddlers like making towers and piles out of things like bricks. Things like toy drums, cymbals and tambourines are also appreciated for simply being able to make a noise (and parents’ faces contort!).
Toddlers also like toys that can help them play by imagination. There is a lot of truth in the old joke that children will get more fun out of playing with the cardboard box a toy comes in than the toy itself. Paints and modelling clay are old but ongoing favourites.
Soft cuddly toys are usually also a safe bet for children perhaps up to and including their earlier school years. Toys that also allow building and puzzle-solving are also well regarded by the majority of children.
Finally, there are those toys that kids can use to emulate your activities. Most love things like kitchen sets, toy vacuums and tools etc.
Why the perceptions of parents and other people might vary
If you’re not the primary care provider, it’s worth keeping in mind two key points:
- something you and the recipient child think is great, might not strike the parents in the same way. An example might be a very noisy toy like a battery-powered electronic keyboard, which might easily drive the parents insane after an hour or so;
- you’ll need to be sure that the gift conforms to the parents’ views of acceptability. This will be discussed further below.
It’s a good idea to check before you buy with the parents to be sure they’ll be happy with your gift.
21st-century sensitivities
This is a very difficult area to discuss in broad-brush terms. That’s partly because parental opinions differ so widely and partly because experts and their studies often reach fundamentally differing conclusions on these subjects.
Whilst most kids probably won’t care, you should keep in mind that some parents today are highly sensitive to the following:
- toy gifts that imply gender-based roles. For example, dolls and tea sets for girls at the same time as boys are given tools, toy trucks and construction sets;
- sexualised dolls mainly given to girls – sometimes coming with overly-pronounced female physical features and at times also dressed in sexy clothing. Some believe this might risk encouraging girls to see women as being primarily sexual objects;
- Usually given to boys, these can be highly controversial. Experts fundamentally disagree over the effect of children going “bang bang” with such toys and whether or not it might influence their future development.
There is some evidence that, given their own choice, children past a certain age will often (but not always) incline towards toys typically associated with their gender.
Once dismissed as only “society’s pressures”, there is now more evidence suggesting this links to girls’ typically higher skills in and predisposition towards, social interactions than that of boys. So, girls will tend to select toys that require more social interaction imagination, such as dolls and playhouses, whereas boys will incline towards those that require more individual action, such as building things.
There are no right or wrong answers to the above. Each person will need to form their own view as to how real these effects are in the context of their own children.
