Simplicity Parenting (14 page)

The Antidote

Have I thoroughly depressed you with this list? If it doesn’t downright dampen their mood, it gives most parents pause. We’re so accustomed to thinking of toys in purely positive terms: “Fun!” “Educational!” “Guaranteed to please!” It’s no wonder that our children’s bins and rooms are overrun with them. Who wants to consider what “evil lurks inside the toy chest”?! Who wants to look at the unadvertised, unintended, and not-so-positive effects that some of these toys have on our children? Or to consider how having so many toys can affect their attention and their sense of entitlement?

I applaud you for persevering. And after the doom-and-gloom session we’ve just had, I understand you need an antidote. You need a glimpse of what a simplified play environment can be, and what it can offer your child. Coming right up.

So as not to leave you sitting among piles of toys, some to be discarded, stored, or kept, I’ll make a few suggestions for organizing. From there we’ll take a look—hopefully an optimistic and inspiring one—at what you’ve been working toward in simplifying your child’s toys and play environment.

Organizing What Remains

Congratulations are in order once you’ve slogged through the pile and pulled out most of the excess toys. At first it’s fun, digging around for that plastic exploding disaster from Grandma, or the one with the high-decibel whine, and tossing them gleefully into the discard pile. (By the way, to avoid hurt feelings, you can label a storage box with the name of the gift giver for easy retrieval. “Grandma” or “Uncle Bill” toys can then
reappear when they come to visit.) It’s a real pleasure to declutter, to see clear surfaces again. It’s calming, for you and your children, to be surrounded with clean lines and a simpler palette rather than a riot of shapes and colors.

Once you’ve identified all of the discards, you’ll be left with a group of toys that are fine, undamaged, but not members of the keepers group. These toys can be put into storage, forming a toy library. In the future they can be brought back into the child’s room, and back into play, but only on a “lending library” basis. In other words, for every toy that reenters the room, one from the room must be put into storage. This isn’t a rule imposed for the sake of pickiness; it’s a finger in the dike of our culture’s flood of “stuff” just waiting to reenter your home. I’ve found that until parents have really embraced simplification, they must be careful not to reopen the “stuff” floodgates. However, I’ve also seen that once they’ve simplified enough to appreciate the changes it inspires, no vigilance is necessary. The process, and choices involved, become second nature.

Ideally, you want a small number of beloved toys at hand and visible at any given time. Beyond those, you can have others that are accessible (in baskets or bins), but not visible. Either they are under the bed, and can be pulled out to be played with, or they are covered by a lid or by fabric. You can use whatever organizing system you wish, but you want to dramatically limit the visual clutter. My preference has been to have some large baskets, covered or draped with colored fabric.

By keeping the toys low—at a child’s level—and movable (that is, in baskets or carts that can be pulled out), you are inviting a child’s participation in cleanup. If the bin or toy chest is unmovable, a child will usually clean up … one … item … at … a … time. First they’ll bring this one over to dump in the bin, then they’ll go back for this very interesting one, which really needs to be looked at more carefully, because really, when it is connected with this one over here… The child is fully involved again, but not in cleaning up. If the basket can be slid to the child, then he or she can use both hands to tidy up, staying right there, engaged, until the task is done.

By displaying and playing from one basket at a time, a child is better able to focus while playing, and to clean up. Upending huge bins of toys sometimes seems like a bonanza, a luxury of possibilities. In daily life terms, however, doing so just creates, and re-creates, chaos. Areas of clutter around the house tend to be hot spots for difficulties with transitions and discipline. The forces of time and space naturally collide
where there is too little time and too much stuff. Kids tend to spin out in response to too many things, making cleanup and transitions even more problematic.

How many toys can your child (depending on their age) put away, by themselves, in five minutes? Let that be your guide. Reinforce the notion by storing most toys out of view and by saying, when necessary: “That’s enough toys out now.”

I’ll make more suggestions for organizing as we continue. However, after such a prolonged focus on what
not
to keep, one longs to consider the keepers. After all of the work of discarding, let’s consider play, and what it can be when simplified. Hopefully, where once there stood a mountain of playthings, you now have a relative “molehill” of beloved toys.

Simplified Play

You are the best judge of what delights and engages your child. You know which toys fit them developmentally, which ones they cherish. I think you’ll be amazed by how many toys really will be forgotten—not even missed—if they disappear. On the other hand, you know which of your child’s toys have currency over the long haul. While one might be up on the shelf at the moment, you know it’s just on hiatus. It’s a keeper; it won’t be out of circulation for long. You know the ones that are carried around, the ones that have made a place in your child’s heart, their stories and conversations, perhaps even their dreams.

Even more than with the discards, I am going to address the keepers in general terms. Rather than list toys that may or may not fit your child, I’d like to discuss some ideas about play, to paint some images that are not tied to any particular toy, or to any Hollywood script. I’d like to begin with this assumption (which I’m hoping you’ll grant me, now that you’ve slogged through an overgrown toy pile): Kids don’t need many toys to play, or any particular one. What they need most of all is unstructured time.

Hopefully, you’ll see that in simplifying your child’s toys and play, you are also simplifying your parental “duties.” You don’t need to stimulate or enrich play You don’t have to control it. Sometimes we parents help most by getting out of the way, while being available. We can provide time, opportunities, and resources. Play is an of-the-moment affair, as any parent knows who’s fielded an urgent request for “feathers!” or “a really floppy hat” or “something we can use for a grocery cart.” The resource
providing can be tricky. But by allowing rather than controlling, we give children a sense of freedom and autonomy. Their play is open-ended, the choices and decisions are theirs to make, and the discovery process includes self-discovery.

So I’ll offer no list of “must-have” toys. Instead, consider play at its simplest: what it can do and be for kids, what needs it fills, and what develops naturally from it. There is nothing novel in what I’ll suggest, but these simple elements of play are worth reconsidering. They may remind you of some activities and pastimes that don’t rely on hordes of toys. They may also suggest new directions for our parental generosity, our natural desire to provide for our children.

Moving away from things and toward experiences, we can be indulgent with time and opportunities for exploration. We can be lavish, unsparing with the space and time kids need to move and be physically active; bounteous with opportunities for them to connect with nature and others. Our generosity can stretch and expand in response to their need for make-believe, art, purpose, music, and joyful, busy involvement.

A mix of toys should definitely be part of a child’s world of play, It just shouldn’t be the overwhelming center. Within the following descriptions you will see places for some of the toys you’ve already identified as beloved, your child’s keepers. You may even be inspired to add to the mix you have, to round it out with some simple toys that could inspire new directions in their play.

Trial and error
. The long process toward a baby’s first steps is driven by her desire to see and experience more of the world. From turning her head to the side, to pushing up on her elbows while lying on her belly, and eventually to rolling over, each phase requires repetitive trial and error, and great effort. It’s a personal struggle, but it is also a re-creation, in miniature, of our evolution as humans into vertical bipeds. Recreating all of human development takes time, even if most infants manage it within a year and a half or so. It requires many hours of “floor time,” of stretching, scootching, and crawling about.

There has been a dramatic rise in “sensory integration” therapy in the past ten years, which strives to build neural connections and pathways that were not established naturally through these early childhood activities. In our hurry to have our children walk, or in our anxiousness to serve them, we may cause them to skip stages essential for neural development. Instead, when we let the process happen—without trying to hurry or help it along—we are allowing the development of our child’s brains and bodies. We are also helping them sow the seeds of their own curiosity, attention, perseverance, and will. All of these faculties will continue to grow and develop through play.

Touch
. Children use and develop all of their senses through play. Touch is the most prevalent of these for small children, and so they put
everything
into their mouths, that most sensitive of touch organs. A child’s sense of touch metamorphoses into their awareness of the world, and their awareness of their own body, and boundaries: of self and “other.” A child who does not fully develop their sense of touch through explorative play can become hypersensitive to their own personal space and hypersensitive (or not fully aware) of another’s. Consider your child’s play environment through various lenses of “touch.” Natural materials, ones that invite touch, will inspire your little one’s explorations, their sensory safaris.

Outside, they’ll want to dig, feeling the give of dirt warmed by the sun, or the cool viscousness of mud. But what will they be touching in their room, in their indoor play? What textures and weights, what angles and smooth lines? Not every toy will provide this, but it is wonderful when a toy engages more than just a young child’s fingers. When a little one buttons a doll’s sweater, sits it up, and cradles it in their arms, he or she is using small and gross motor movements, yes. More to the point, though, they are putting more of themselves—almost their whole bodies—into the connection, the interaction. Rattles, nesting cubes, cloth dolls for babies, silks and scarves, heavy woolen blankets and cloaks, the pliancy of beeswax and clay as they warm to touch, a basket of smooth pebbles that change color when wet, solid wooden blocks and shapes, gnarled roots and sticks, beanbags.

Food preparation offers a parade of sensory delights for children: kneading damp, stretchy bread dough, its aroma as it bakes, stirring all manner and consistencies of liquids, forming shapes with cookie cutters, seeing butter melt and spread into the warm craters of toast. Even toddlers can have their own “real” kitchen tools, such as a workboard or
mat, apron, wooden spoons, vegetable brushes, rolling pin, pots and pans, whisks and spatulas, with cloths for polishing apples and tidying up. Garden tools also should be real: a wheelbarrow or garden cart, garden gloves, with a small, but real shovel, rake, and trowels.

I think it is important that, whenever possible, what a child touches be real. A plastic hammer has no solidity, no weight or heft in the hands of a five-year-old. Even small versions of real tools are preferable to such blatantly false imitations. Granted, a child must be taught how to use real tools, and monitored for a time. But with such play comes the bonus of genuine involvement and mastery. A small worktable or bench, preferably right alongside the larger one used by Mom or Dad, can involve a child to lesser and greater degrees over many years.

Imagine the tactile pleasure of a tree stump, and an old-fashioned turning hand drill. For some kids, the pulling and pounding may lead to genuine skills. More likely it will just be time spent happily doing and fixing. Blocks of wood with nails hammered in, basic wooden boats—building things, building a sense of themselves.

The airport I often fly in and out of has one of those bright plastic playhouses plopped in the middle of a barren room. I’ve never seen a child near it. Each time I pass by I imagine how happily populated the room might be if, instead of the fake house, there were boxes of wooden blocks, and wooden stands and easels, stumps, planks, cloths, and large clothespins or clips. Imagine the construction that would take place! And not only by kids … I picture travel-weary adults joining in as well.

Pretending; imaginary play
. It starts with imitation, and takes flight from there. The six-month-old baby learns to wave, or to imitate a simple clapping rhythm they hear you make. Soon, as they enter their second year and beyond, they will be role-playing and pretending, using imitation and imagination to create elaborate stories and worlds of their own making. Much has been made in recent years of how this make-believe play helps children develop critical cognitive skills known as executive function. Executive function includes the ability to self-regulate, to amend one’s behavior, emotions, and impulses appropriately to the environment and situation.
¹²