Kicking the Toy Addiction
by Ellen C. Braun
Filed under Controversial Parenting Styles, Emotional Development, Values & Ethics
Signs of the annual December gift-buying-frenzy are suddenly sprouting around me like mushrooms after a rainstorm, via catalogs, store displays, emails, and children’s discussions of what they want to receive this winter.
Do your children look forward to the thrill of a new toy or gadget, only to leave it on a shelf collecting dust with hundreds of other neglected games a few days later?
Below, John Rosemond, author of Parenting by the Book offers some useful tips for curbing the toy-store addiction, just in time to reflect on our shopping mindset prior to the holidays:
Forty years ago, the average American 5-year-old child was in possession of less than 10 store bought toys; today the number exceeds 100 and that doesn’t count the ones that lie buried in the city dump. An excess of toys dampens imagination, creativity and resourcefulness and leads to chronic complaints of boredom. At some point the child becomes addicted – not to the toys themselves, but to the hollow thrill of getting a new toy. In short order the child becomes convinced that play comes from a store rather than from the alchemy of his own imaginings.
When our children were 9 and 6, Willie and I directed each of them to choose 10 toys from the riot of toys that filled their rooms and spilled over into nearly every other room of the house. A relatively small set of something – as in 10 “Matchbox” cars – counted as one toy. The remainder were either tossed or given to a local church-sponsored children’s charity. Somewhat to our surprise, the children regarded this as an adventure of sorts. We never again darkened the door of a toy store, instead guiding the kids toward hobbies and other creative pursuits.
I recently received a similar success story from a reader in Jackson, Mississippi. She writes: “Back in 1991 when my husband and I started our family, we decided then not to over-indulge our children with toys. Grandparents, however, didn’t always comply, and the sheer number of children we had (five) left our closets overflowing. We solved that problem a few years ago by dividing all the toys into four piles labeled winter, spring, summer and fall. We bagged them up, and into the attic they went. We pull the appropriate bag down the first day of each December, March, June and September. The children love it! It’s as if Christmas comes to our house four times a year. When it’s time to repack them, each child donates a toy to charity. As a result, what was once a clutter is now quite manageable.”
Whenever I talk on this subject someone will ask what to do about the above-mentioned “Grandparent Problem.” A reader from Nashville proposes requesting that the grandparents keep all toys purchased for the grandchild at their house. She correctly points out that asking grandparents not to make toy purchases, or only one on the child’s birthday and one at Christmas or Hannukah, is likely to generate hard feelings, interfering as it might with the grandparents’ need to dote. That’s a good idea, but one that’s more likely to work if the grandparents live nearby. If they don’t, then regular care packages are a means of reminding the grandchildren of their love, and that’s certainly unimpeachable. But instead of toys, I suggest books. Or the grandparents could introduce the grandchild in question to a hobby and advance the child’s interests with regular gifts of hobby supplies and equipment.
Some friends of ours, after drastically reducing their children’s toy stocks, sent their very generous relations a letter explaining what they’d done. The children, the relatives were told, had readily agreed that from that day forward for every toy they received as a gift, they would give a toy of equal value away to charity. Books, hobby-related items and creative materials were exempted. Not surprisingly, while their generosity did not wane, the relatives never gave the children another toy.
For every problem, there is a solution.
Family psychologist John Rosemond answers parents’ questions on his
website at www.rosemond.com.
I am so guilty of buying the kids toys that clutter up our house, and after that initial new-toy-thrill wears off, my kids complain that they are bored. I really LOVE the advice about books and hobbies, and I am going to offer my 2 girls a choice of hobbies for the holidays this year- that is so much more educational than new games! Thank you for this! Warm regards, Sheryl
This is terrific!!! I feel sorry for all those who left this newsletter because they could not stand reading an opposing opinion! Go Ellen!
This is such a common problem among so many and we are just as guilty as the next family! My boys are 13, 11 and 8. In an effort to reduce the amount of “things” and increase our quality and educational time together, we are trying hard to look more toward expereince gifts. Last year, an over-indulgent grandparent was thrilled to give our boys a annual aquarium membership. The kids have loved going more regularly and we have loved the time together. Another idea is gift cards to the movies (such an expensive family outing…). We have also started donating to a favorite charity in the kids’ names and given a related gift. For instance, a sports enthusiast last year received a biography of a favorite basketball coach and a gift was made in his name to that coach’s foundation. Grandparents on the other side have given trips with them (priceless multi-generational family time) and gift certificates to summer camps in an area of interest to the child. We also are sure to donate time each year to our local toy workshop cleaning and sorting toys. Really puts things in perspective! we have done this since our children were in pre-school. I love looking for creative ways to look beyond toys and look forward to reading others’ ideas!
I love these ideas, Our daughter is almost 4 and she is already starting to ask for stuff each time we go into a store. I need to nip this now or it will be really bad when she’s older.
My whole family is guilty of buying toys for the kids. We just didn’t have much as kids and we love the toys as much as the kids do. I have the smallest house and it has become a clutter problem. My children and I have decided that it’s ok to put the toys in totes in the garage and they can still keep them. My 12 year old likes computers now and that’s his hobby. The 5 year old still loves his toys and he especially LOVES his older brother’s toys that we find in totes in the garage. I go through totes once in a while and throw away broken treasures and organized sets of things. It’s not the toys that are important. I think it’s the sentiments connected to them that need to be respected. Clutter’s still a problem…..Just not the main battle I choose to fight right now in our lives. They will grow up and move away someday. The fingerprints will be washed away and baby teeth will be replaced by adult teeth. Youthful innocence will be replaced with adult concerns. I like the toys.
My sentiments exactly. Toys were made for exciting childrens minds… stage for everything in life . A little bit of everything is a balanced approach….my younger kids are 8 and 6. I now buy toys when they receive 5 A grades. Its an incentive to maintain there grades and a wonderful and irreplaceable feeling of having ‘earned’ the toy.
Some toys really are junk, but others are very educational. My sons have a bunch of Constux sets, which I bought on ebay, it was a great Fisher Price building toy in the 80′s that was discontinued- I used to love it when I was a kid! Building toys really stretch their imagination, they build rockets, triple-decker buses and create elaborite stories around their vehicles! However, if I’m going to be honest, over 50% of the stuff in our playroom is simply junk. Great article.
It can be very hard to decide what is going to end up as junk. We have shelves full of untouched books because of my perception that books don’t count as junk and therefore don’t need to be restricted (despite an easily accessed public library system), ditto art materials. Yet the action figures and craze items that my children sometimes do indeed seem addicted to acquiring more and more of – they are constantly played with in imaginative ways. My children are not me and don’t have all the same tastes and interests that I did (alas!)
I also have a nasty suspicion that in these days of ‘anti-clutter’ computer games and DVDs are popular for taking up less room and being easily tidied.
Great article. At one point in our home toys seems to mutiply, and my children were overwhelmed with clean up time. So, we bagged up most all of the kids toys keeping only 3 per child out. The bags were in storage for 4 months!
Our children never missed them, and were out the door to play a lot more often. We have not looked back and love it. To help grandpaernts and other family members were ask for Zoo passes, movie tickets/rentals ect. for bithday and Christmas. One grandpaents gives small gifts and then pruchases CDs or stocks for the kids
We have a household of three kids each with a large collection of toys. This year when my daughter turned 10 and my son turned 8 we talked about what they wanted for their birthdays. They both had large ticket price items on their list. We talked about how reasonable it was to expect those presents from birthday guests. We reviewed some of the presents they received the previous year. They realized they received a lot of presents, most of which we no longer played with or were broken. They agreed that they did not need any more of these presents so for their birthdays we asked their friends to not buy a present. If a “gift” was to be given, they would accept a donation to a charity (they choose “Me to We” which was charity their school supported). Together they gave $360 to the charity and felt very proud of themselves (as I did of them). Of course, I have not had this much luck with the youngest but 2 out of three is okay for now.
Our son is only 7mo, so it’s easy to refrain from buying toys right now. He is just as happy playing with (or sucking on) the same toy all day long. And we have decided not to buy him anything for Christmas. We’d like to get him a keepsake ornament or something like that, but he absolutely does not need any toys.
But in two or three years, I might be singing a different tune. I would love to think that we will have a relatively excess-free house, but only time will tell.
Wish me luck!