Why I Dumped Battery Operated Toys

In my experience I have found battery operated toys to be a huge obstacle in my child’s social, emotional and creative development.

Let us admit it; we all are in a quest to source toys that are intellectually stimulating. The sales guys at TOYS R US are just so persuasive. They will bombard you with the various intellectual benefits of the gorgeous blinking and singing toys making it buying impossible to resist.  But PAUSE. TAKE A MOMENT. THEN LEAVE! Such toys do a good job at shutting your child’s brain!

Play should be such that promotes learning through brain and body stimulus. Battery operated toys offer no education to a child.

Picture this.Your child receives the most coveted fancy battery operated car. It’s the fanciest toy on the block and he’s hooked on from the word GO. You are happy. He’s off your time for now.

Now picture this. The toy is computed to do a flip, a spin, race forwards and reverse. This isn’t an open-ended toy. The minute your child attempts getting creative with it one of the first most likely moves is going to be abandoning the remote and commence manual maneuverings. This is his creative need kicking in.

I love what Paula Polk Lillard says in Montessori: A Modern Approach,

“Instead of opportunities for serious accomplishment in our culture, we supply our children with expensive toys, hoping that these will occupy them and keep them from disturbing us.

In actuality, even in today’s world of the “educational toy,” most of the toys adults give to children do not meet their needs for growth and involvement with the real world. Consequently, they are a source of frustration to the child, and he does not remain occupied with them for long (116).”

Play is all that a child is meant to do. It comes before most other things, eating, drinking and even sleeping. It’s the way they learn about the world around them. They are eager ones. They love to hear pans rattle, blocks falling, digging for pebbles, pretending to be super heroes. Through play their minds develop.

Even toys get thirsty!

WAYS IN WHICH BATTERY OPERATED TOYS AFFECT A CHILD’S BRAIN

1. They do almost nothing to promote creative skills, social skills, problem solving skills, and cooperative play. However blocks, hands on objects, wooden toys do all of these.
2. Going back to the traditional play of earlier times, kids occupied themselves in interactive play. When your child has to interact to play, there is huge benefit for language development and social skills. There is not much interaction with battery-operated toys.
3. During the first years of a child’s life, he will grow trillions of brain-cell connections (scholastic com). Children learn best from exploring through opportunities of play which are provided to them. Toys are fantastic tools for this. It is through these toys and play that they will be able to connect and ‘wire’ those brain-cells for adulthood.

ALTERNATES TO BATTERY OPERATED TOYS

1. Do It Toys

2. Moving Toys

3. Pretend Play Toys

Food For Mommy’s Thought: Remove the batteries from your child’s toys. It is then that you will witness magic.