FEBRUARY 2004 - THE NOISE OF TOYS

Christmas with all of its wrappings and trappings is long since gone. The decorations and tree stored away under the stairs for another year. But, what lingers and reverberates through the halls of our home, is the noise of the holiday toys.

Remember that part in the Grinch Who Stole Christmas…
"I must find someway to stop Christmas from coming!" For, tomorrow he knew…all the Who girls and boys would wake up bright and early. They'd rush for their toys! And then! Oh, the noise. Oh, the Noise! Noise! Noise! Noise!"

I can relate to that cranky old creature, and my heart is far from two sizes too small.

It seems to me that the gifts my boys received this year make some kind of sound or another. There's Hokey Pokey Elmo who puts his right hand in, twirls on one leg and says "Oops. Can you help Elmo up please? " when he is knocked over. He even says thank you when up righted. And then there are the musical books, the kid cell phones, the baby radios that play any number of nursery rhymes when buttons are pushed, the train that chugs and toots across the kitchen floor, the Sesame Street saxophone that is so sensitive to motion you don't even need to push a button. It pipes out jazz ditties simply when the dogs turn in their beds or someone walks across the living room floor. And so the list goes on.

I always amazed by the shear volume these toys emit. After all, children have extremely good hearing. So, why do manufacturers persist in creating such loud toys. Perhaps because these toys are so pervasive, they need to outdo one another when more than one is being played at the same time.

In any case, I of course appreciate the thoughts that went behind the purchase of each gift by the various friends and family members from whom they came. But, the cacophony of sounds that seem to trail behind my kids as they wonder through the house is really starting to grate. The image that comes to mind is of Linus from the Peanuts cartoons. Instead of being surrounded by clouds of dirt, my children are enveloped by a blanket of noise. And so am I, by default.

My husband is a creative and resourceful guy. His solution to the racket is to perform "alterations" to the toys. Elmo underwent a C-section to reveal his speaker. After it was packed with cotton pads, he was stitched back together and is a much quieter hokey pokeyer these days.

As an educator of young children, I tend to look at the bigger picture behind what we expose our children to and how it may effect them in the world of school and learning. In defense of these melodic toys, they do reinforce cause and effect. If I push this button, turn this knob, etc. then that will happen. My youngest is a lover of music and sways with gusto to his singing books and instruments. Without these toys and before he could talk, he did not have the ability to add music to his environment when he wanted. He relied on us to sense that need and satisfy it. Now, he can tend to his musical desires when he wants to. All that may be well and good, but these flashy noisy toys create a highly stimulated environment. In my book, they are one-shot toys. That is, there is nothing else you can do with them, but make them sing or play. They require no creativity on the part of the child and are so limited in their use. What they do provide is immediate gratification. Push this and vola, music.
How many times have we all heard other parents, grandparents and even ourselves, tell our kids to just please wait. To be more patient. To try at little harder on their own before appealing for help. To experiment and see for themselves what works best. We ask this of our kids, but think about the tools and examples that we give them to meet these goals.

Toys are the tools of children. It is what they spend a good portion of their day interacting with. Toys that encourage thought, experimentation and effort to reach a desired end result, such as what happens when building with Legos, K'nex, Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys to name just a few, provide children with opportunities to practice patience, experimentation and prediction.

The more open-ended a toy is, the more your child can grow when playing with it. Even a simple set of plastic farm animals that move only when the pudgy little hand of your toddler picks them up, or that moo or baa when your two-year old "talks" for them, requires far more interaction and imagination than squeezing the start button in Elmo's fuzzy red hand.

I went through all the toys in my boy's play room and thought about which ones foster the type of behaviors that I want to instill in my children. Although I am a teacher, my children's rooms do not look like school rooms. I do not have educational toys that one may find in a preschool or kindergarten. I'll leave those to Logan's and Brandon's teachers to provide when the time comes.

So, what am I going to do with all those noisy toys? Well, I am not really sure. I think though, my boys are deciding for me… I noticed that Elmo has been crammed under the crib untouched for days now, the singing books are quieter, not looked at nearly as much as the old silent favorites, but the saxophone endures!