MotherSpirit Article: Children's Work

My husband and I had very different childhoods. I spent mine outside happily playing with what I had at hand and making a lot of my own toys - like dollhouse furniture. His childhood was spent in a basement in front of a television and playing with a lot of Star Wars™ action figures and Lego™. As a result, we sometimes have very different ideas about what are appropriate toys for our kids. We've made compromises and discussed our feelings about play and toys a great deal. It's an ongoing dialogue, especially as our son grows older.

I feel that toys should be completely open ended, that there shouldn't be an implied morality already embodied in them when a child picks them up to use as a tool. I prefer dolls that have the simplest facial features so they can be happy, sad, angry, surprised depending on what the child needs from them. A doll that is simple in form and expression can go from being a character in a beloved fairy tale, to a best friend, to anything the child can imagine.

My husband loved having realistic character models of his favorite movie characters to play with. He recreated scenes from the movies with them and then extended into his own storylines where he developed the characters further and used the ready made characters as archetypes in his own stories. Having good guys and bad guys was part of that.

I like simple wooden building blocks that can go from being used as furniture in the dollhouse one minute to a town of little houses the next. I also prefer rough cut blocks from logs to square blocks, the closer the toy is to nature the happier I am with it as a tool.

For my husband, the built in structure and limitations of a linking building block system are a challenge and the fact that once you understand the pieces, you can build anything is an important part of the toy's play value. It might take some planning to build with the pieces, but that is half the challenge and half the fun.

The compromise we've made in this is not to introduce the more structured toys until our children are leaving the first stage of childhood and entering the second (between age 6 and 7). At this point their critical thinking faculties are being developed and they can begin to make value judgements about how they want to approach a toy, and always have the option of choosing between an open ended toy and a more structured toy. At this age children's concept of realism is being developed, and they begin to demand more realism in their own play and art as well. Before this point a child is being inhibited by toys that are too structured.

We have long discussions about "good guys" and "bad guys" and by observing how our son plays with these characters a few things have become apparent. When a character is typecast as a "bad guy" or a "good guy" all play must revolve around the conflict between their personalities. The more developed a character is and the more aware our son is of that character's depth the more likely he is to engage in more complex play with that character, the same sort of play he engages in with the most basic poppet style dolls. In choosing which figures to give him from my husband's childhood collection we removed all weapons and chose only the characters that are multidimensional. We will not buy a

Darth Maul figure as his only role was as an assassin, but Darth Vader is alright, the theme of losing ones way and eventual redemption is central to many of the greatest fairy tales and stories our son has already been exposed to. The other thing I've noticed and have a hard time with still, is that the realistic figures take on static roles Luke Skywalker IS Luke Skywalker, he can't be anyone else in a storytelling. A simple poppet dolly goes from being a daddy, to a knight, to a fairy, to a gardener, to a Viking with a few basic props like tools made from popsicle sticks and a few extra scraps of fabric. Before he had a Luke Skywalker figure, that little poppet figure played Luke as well. Having both types of toys to choose from eases my mind but it's still an issue of contention.

I've also noticed a change in my son's buildings since he's fallen in love with Lego™. Before, the transient nature of his block buildings never bothered him, now when he plots out a building project - regardless of his material - sand, wood, plastic building blocks - longevity is a concern. Is this because of the new stage of childhood he is in, or is the change attributable to the toys he's using? I'd love to hear back from others on their experience with this.

The other issue in our home is the issue of toys made from natural materials versus plastics. I would LOVE it if we never had a single plastic toy in this house. The fact that my son is playing with 20 year old action figures and building blocks doesn't change my personal conviction that there's too much plastic in the world, that it's designed for a throw away society's needs, and that it is contributing to the destruction of the environment. *Sigh* I'll compromise with my 7 year old though...at least I know he won't be chewing on the things, and that because he values the few plastic toys he has they won't find their way into a landfill anytime soon. This is still a big concern of mine though.

So what fuels my bias against plastic? My biggest concern is that they are not safe for children to play with. The softeners used in them (pthalates) are toxic and cause cancers in rats. They would NEVER be treated as food additives, yet are a main ingredient in toys designed to be chewed on by babies and toddlers. Manufacturers argue that they are inert and don't leach out of the toys but plastics begin breaking down after exposure to light, to air, to heat (ever washed a plastic teething toy in the dishwasher?) And these components do end up in the environment this way and in our children's bodies. I remember reading a discussion on a toy forum a year or so ago where a mother was complaining that her child's toy telephone was leaking dye all over her child every time she chewed on it. I would have FREAKED if this happened to my child! Her biggest concern and the biggest concern of the manufacturer wasn't that this could happen at all, but that she get a replacement that didn't leave red dye all over her child. I can't trust manufacturers to place my child's safety as a primary concern when they make toys. WHAT was that child ingesting???? A few years ago there was great concern over lead poisonings caused by the deterioration of vinyl window blinds here in Canada. Exposure to light was allowing the lead used in the vinyl to be released into homes and there was concern over elevated lead readings in children in homes with these kinds of plastic blinds. They were pulled from the market VERY quickly. A number of European countries have banned the use of pthalates in toys that children will mouth. In Canada there has been a push to get companies to voluntarily withdraw their use, but nothing at all has been done in the United States. From my perspective, removing these chemicals simply from toys designed to be chewed doesn't address the fact that these toxins are still in other toys (that will in all likelihood be chewed) and in household products, and they are making their way into our living environments as they age and begin to breakdown.

true, and what does that teach a child? How can they experience natural consequences when they can throw a plastic toy teapot against the wall in a tantrum and have nothing happen to it? What happens when the teapot is actually an inherited china teapot from your beloved grandmother? Would you even consider throwing it against the wall? I don't see the value in having "kid things" that don't matter, and adult things that do. I don't want my children to grow up thinking that their belongings are disposable and mine have value and must be treated well. When our children are small, breakables that have value are stored away safely until they learn through observation that you must treat your belongings well. The breakables are back down for *everyone* to enjoy much more quickly this way.

I place a great deal of value in children learning about their natural environment by experiencing it. It kills me to see bags of plastic shells for sale in toy stores, what is wrong with giving children REAL shells? What do they learn from the plastic ones? They don't weigh the same as real shells, they don't smell the same, they don't taste the same, and they don't feel the same...for the most part they don't even look the same - coming in bizarre bright colours when the real thing is gently hued and often designed for camouflage of some kind. Plastic denies a child the ability to really learn about the objects in their environment. It often seems that these plastic versions are considered safer than the real thing...that might be true for poison arrow frogs but really, there aren't that many true dangers involved in letting our children out there to explore! (This issue about dangers lurking everywhere is ANOTHER journal entry!) A real mussel shell is going to be immensely more satisfying to play with than a plastic one! Finally, there is the issue of plastics being used to help fuel a consumer society obsessed with getting the cheapest possible product so we can all have MORE. Cheap, disposable, mass produced - often in places with horrible human rights and workers rights violations leveled against them, all so we can have more stuff. Well, do my children need a few quality toys that will actually last through the rigours of their childhood, perhaps to be passed on to their own children, or do they need to have so many toys of lesser quality and questionable value that I'm forced to rotate them so they'll eventually play with them all? When a toy breaks, does it matter? Do they really care? I don't think they do if we just say "Oh well, it's JUST plastic lets head on over to the dollar store and buy another one" This isn't a value I want to instill in my children.

After rereading my last entry it occurred to me that you might get the impression that I feel all toys must be permanent and of heirloom quality. Not at all! The BEST toys are absolutely free, and completely transient! Sand, water, soil, snow, leaves, flowers, pebbles, pine cones, sticks, logs and pieces of bark should be central to children's play. With them, children are taking full responsibility for creating their playthings and using their imagination freely. When all a child has to work with is their own imagination this is where their real work begins. With such FREEDOM they can really express their feelings, fears, moods, and passions. You are doing your child a huge favour in limiting the actual "toys" they have access to and allowing them to play uninhibited with what they find around them. Natural transient objects are never fixed in their function. If a child has had the chance to develop their imaginative powers early on, a rock can become anything in a free child's hands, they can apply those imaginative skills in all sorts of areas of their lives. I really feel the youngest children are not being served by being given too many toys with a fixed purpose and use. How will that translate into who they become as adults? What kind of thinkers will they be?

The other thing children have reinforced when they play with transient natural objects is the cyclical nature of the world we inhabit. They can develop a relationship with the world around them, with a particular place, with a tree, with a stream bed. What they discover there will evolve and change through the seasons and over time and when the cycle repeats itself they will develop expectations based on those natural rhythms.

Natural rhythms are the "schedules" young children crave. They give them a sense of safety and security, and help them find their place in the world. They observe and work with these rhythms when they play outside in the natural world, and when they observe and participate in your day to day work - the cooking, cleaning, folding of laundry. They recognize the importance of these rhythms in our lives, it's why much of their play as toddlers is imitative. If we find joy and satisfaction in our work, and involve our children in that, they grow up seeing the value in everything they do. This is another way for your child to learn what inner peace feels like.