Friday, July 31, 2009

Oh, the Joy of Toys



Since Ethan recently had his first birthday, he got quite a treasure of toys. (So much for my de-cluttering efforts…) As I was shopping for his birthday present, I found that over half the toys were interactive, with lights glowing, horns blowing and every childlike voice coming out of them that you can think of—cute at first, but sure to make you want to toss it to the bottom of the toy chest soon enough.

Brent and I had read that it's much better to get toys that are not interactive for him to play with. These will help him develop better and learn more. Ethan seems to like both types luckily.

What has your experience been and what do you think??

Also, I was against the idea of ever letting Ethan play with any sort of toy guns. Is it wrong to deprive him of acting out "cowboys and indians" or is that "cops and robbers" nowadays??

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Merry, you guys need another one, so you can quit worrying about all this!

brent said...

My kid will not need toy guns. He will learn how to use a toy guitar from the masters like Pete Townsend & Paul Stanley. He will have a lot of practice time on our birds. hehe

The Donahues said...

I felt the same way about guns, but it's hard to stick to that. Between other people's houses and their video remote guns and squirt guns etc, it's hard to keep them away from it. I don't encourage it, but I have decided not to get to worked up about it either. As far as interactive toys, the older Jaxon gets the more he's into the non-interactive ones... But sometimes he HAS to play with the monster truck that makes a TON of noise that his uncle got him. Thanks Ian.

Wendy Pramik said...

Hi Merry,

Yesterday I went to Kohl's to buy Rosie some sensible tennis shoes. I ended up getting her a pair of silver and pink sandals with Disney princesses on them. Oh yeah, they also light up every time she takes a step. I got them because she liked them and wanted to wear them. We walked out of the store with one old tennis shoe on her left foot and a princess sandal on the right. She even wore them while taking her nap. At the end of the day, though, she asked me to take them off because they hurt her feet. I don't know what my point is, but I guess I'm just trying to say that kids will discover on their own that something is junk. Today she'll probably want her old, stinky tennis shoes back on.

Jane said...

Brent, he will take that toy guitar and pretend it is a gun, believe me.

Anonymous said...

I had toy guns as a child and when brent got old enough i tried getting him interested in them. He had no desire for one. It's probably all based on what you see on TV and movies. My generation, cops, robbers, cowboys, indians was all there was on tv.

Dad