How Toys Teach  

Former FCC Commissioner Nicholas Johnson once said,

The same could be said about toys. All toys teach. Every single one of them. Without exception! 

The question is what are they teaching?
            The Great Toys teach important life skills such as Communication, Cooperation, Problem Solving, Planning & Strategy, Logical Thinking, and Cause & Effect.
                                     

Don't believe it? Let's take an easy example - Dolls.
          When your daughter plays with a doll, what does she do? She talks to the doll and gives the doll a voice with which to reply (communication). She invites other friends & their dolls to play with her (communication & cooperation). She sets up tea parties, setting tables, figuring out who sits where and what the schedule of events will be (planning & strategy). She plays out scenes where her doll is sick and needs her help (problem solving). She mimics roles of responsibility by being "responsible" for her baby and has to think through her actions and how they affect her doll (logical thinking). If she has a doll that cries she's also learning cause & effect.
         Dolls are just one example of what we call Role Play Toys that includes action figures, wooden trains, kitchens, dress-up clothes, puppets, and themed play sets. Along with encouraging children to use their imagination, Role Play Toys are great teachers of Communication, Cooperation, and Planning & Strategy - skills we use in our everyday lives.
                                                   

Here's another example – Wooden Blocks
              When your child opens his first extensive wooden block set he immediately builds the model that is displayed on the box. (following directions = logical thinking). If he screws up along the way he has to figure out how to get back on track (problem solving). Eventually he decides to build something new with the pieces he has (planning & strategy), making changes along the way (problem solving again). When he is done, he often has a model that demonstrates something entirely new or has other actions (cause & effect), or a Role Play Toy that incorporates all the skills discussed previously.
              Along with encouraging children to use their imagination, Puzzles, Play Stations, Educational Toys, Roll Play, are great teachers of Planning & Strategy, Problem Solving, Logical Thinking, Math Skills, and Cause & Effect. Is it any wonder that many of Uncle Phil’s Top Toys are either Role Play Toys or Construction Toys? (Wooden Blocks, Puppets, Kitchen Fun, and Wooden Trains to name a few.)

The Great Toys - toys that are Open-Ended, Interactive and Creative - not only keep our children entertained, but also challenge them to think, to use their brains, and explore their imaginations. But teaching through toys goes much deeper than that. Parents need to be involved in their children's play at some level. Parental involvement helps you steer the direction of play, helps you understand your child's abilities, and helps you reinforce the learning you hope to achieve. But toys are also a means by which we occupy our children so that we can accomplish our own tasks. "Go play with your toys," is a common phrase in many households. 

 Quality DOES matter. And the quality of the toys you buy teaches your children a very important lesson. We live in an "everything must be cheaper, cheaper is better" world. Over 90% of the advertisements you see on TV, read in the paper, or hear on the radio talk about "low prices", "free giveaways", "special discounts" and "huge savings" Here's a little clue for you. Those special savings you might get are not coming out of the profit of the company. It's coming out of the quality of the product. In an effort to have the lowest possible prices, companies like Wal-Mart, Target and K-Mart are forcing manufacturers to cut more and more corners to keep their own prices down. End result? Cheaper, lower quality products. But consumers are eating up those sales, discounts and savings encouraging the companies to continue this practice. And so the prices drop lower and lower and the quality goes down and down and down. Eventually, everything becomes disposable. If it breaks, throw it out and buy a new one. Hey, at these prices, you can afford it.                                   

  Or can you?                                                                      

There is an underlying lesson we are teaching our kids when price becomes the end-all, be-all decision maker in the items we buy - that there is no value in quality. No value in craftsmanship, no value in workmanship, no value in making products that last. And when there is no value placed on quality products, how do we teach kids the value of quality work? How can we ask our kids to do quality schoolwork when we show by our actions that quality doesn't count? How can we expect them to put forth their best effort in the classroom when we aren't willing to pay for effort in the manufacturing world? When we accept the notion that "cheaper is better" we are saying that hard work is not necessary, that attention to detail is not important, that putting in a little more effort is not worth it. Our children learn value by watching where we put our priorities. Value does count. You should get the most for your money. But, as with everything in life, there are consequences for our actions. And our actions teach our children what is important and what is not.                                                                                                            

 For children, it starts with toys. When you buy high-quality toys that are built to last, you teach your children that there is value in hard work and in doing things the right way. You teach your children that it is okay to expect the best. When you buy cheap toys that break easily and are replaced often you teach your children that "enough to get by" is "good enough" and that sloppy work is okay. You can just move on and do something else when what you're doing isn't good enough.                                                                                                                           

 These are real lessons, and one more proof that toys really do teach. Your kids learn from watching you. What do you want them to learn & value?

Uncle Phil