More Isn’t Always Merrier:  Children Can Drown in a Flood of Toys

Joan Almon, Alliance for Childhood

P.O Box 444, College Park, MD 20741; 301-779-1033

www.allianceforchildhood.org

One of the wonderful qualities of make-believe play is that it’s free. It’s a gift of life available to every child.

Watch a child at the beach or in the woods. Nature becomes her toy box—sand and shells, logs and pine cones—everything that comes to hand is used for play. In my kindergarten we had baskets of these simple materials, along with some hand-made dolls and animals. And how the children played! With the same basic materials they created one world after another, houses and castles, rockets and trains. They tied small logs to their backs and became deep-sea divers. Smaller sticks became shampoo bottles and hair spray cans as they set up beauty shops. There were weddings and funerals and all other aspects of life. And all using the same basic play materials.

Why do we think children need so many toys in order to play? And why must the toys be characters from movies and TV, telling pre-scripted stories, and thus limiting the child’s own imagination? The best toys are 90 percent child and 10 percent toy, but there are very few of them left on the market.

In Germany there is a movement called “kindergartens without toys.” For three months each year all the toys are removed from the room. The children play with tables, chairs, and objects from nature. Teachers report much more active play than when the room is full of toys. Most interesting is that when the children are allowed to select toys for the kindergarten at the end of the three months, they don’t want them. They have found the great secret of creative play: fewer toys means more play.

Play is an endangered activity today. There is no time for play, and when there is time the children don’t know how to play. We hear this over and over from parents and teachers. Yet anthropologist Ashley Montagu said, “The ability to play is one of the principal criteria of mental health.”[1]

If play is disappearing, then we must ask if there are signs of increased mental illness as well. The answer is yes. Former Surgeon General David Satcher reported that “the nation is facing a public crisis in mental health care for infants, children, and adolescents.” He cited a World Health Organization estimate of a 50 percent increase in childhood mental illness between 2000 and 2020.[2] The link between the decline of play and increased illness is unproved, but cries out for study.

Children need to play and have a right to play. Toy manufacturers have a right to make money, but their rights should not be allowed to trump the child’s right to a healthy, developmentally sound childhood. It’s time to put first things first. Let children experience a childhood of fewer toys and more play.