By Tom Norton

tom@wktv.org

Mention those three words in any (and I mean any) group of people and you’ll get an immediate response. As an experiment, imagine six to seven people gathered at a holiday social event people who don’t know each other and from the forced, polite conversation you could probably tell each of them would rather be someplace else. Now, in this polite conversation, introduce the subject of toys and in particular, favorite toys and within 60 seconds you would sense the atmosphere around this group changing. It would be like a light switch was thrown. Suddenly there would be interest and growing engagement, the conversation would become animated and within a few minutes, it is likely everyone would be involved and sharing something deeply personal about their lives growing up.

And chances are they wouldn’t be sad stories. Even kids growing up on the lowest rung of the economic ladder have a memory of the “go to” place that a toy, any toy, transported them to. 

If during the holiday season, we talk of peace on earth and good will to all, then our shared sentiment about our own experience with our favorite toy is probably the best place to get people talking, sharing and communicating. I won’t go so far as to suggest that world leaders open negotiating sessions by talking first about their favorite toys, but after so many centuries of war and strife, who wouldn’t be willing to try?  Can you imagine that the first item on the agenda at the next global summit is talking about Tinkertoys or Hot Wheels?

Yes, toys have a power and psychologists have researched, written, theorized and even argued over the extent and meaning of that power. While as we leave adolescence and become teenagers, toys diminish dramatically in importance, at the same time, few objects have such far reaching implications with the development of our psyche. Researcher Etienne Benson with the Association for Psychological Science notes in her article “Toy Stories” that virtually no culture is entirely without toys and that children will turn any and everyday objects into toys and games. All of it proof of that perfectly human need for play, social interaction, and exploration.

But toys, since the industrial revolution of the mid 1800s have gradually become more than that. Some argue that it’s the commoditization of a child’s imagination. Toy manufacturers spend billions on development that employs color, lights, sounds, and tactile feel to draw a child into making this or that object a plaything. Yet why is it that we all know from personal experience of at least one occasion that the cardboard box became the biggest source of pleasure?  

Andrew Meltzoff, a developmental psychologist at the University of Washington, sheds some light on the cardboard box phenomena. He writes, “This interest in playing with everyday objects may reflect a desire to imitate adults and, by imitating, to explore the social values and roles of their societies. Through imitating adults,” he says, “children learn who they are. Toy manufacturers strive mightily to make toys that attract infants and young children with lights and sounds, buzzes and whistles. They can make things that grab the child’s attention, but the children’s hearts lie with the pots and pans, the tea cups and telephones that they see their parents use.”

But toys as it turns out, any toy made of anything; can have far reaching effects on any child’s development. And like anything, it starts with mom or dad and ideally, with both. Tamis-LeMonda and colleagues recently did a study of two- and three-year-old children in low income families. Her research found that supportive joint play of parents for just 10 minutes predicted a child’s performance on standardized tests of cognition and language a year later.  

And toys and playtime may be even more than that. Jerome Singer and Dorothy Singer, co-directors at Yale University Family Television and Consultation Center, have argued that imaginative play is not only fun, but also crucial for development of decision making, keeping things in context and or course, creativity. 

The way we toss away the idea of our favorite toys by our teenage years implies they just aren’t that important. But they have to be. I have to admit that in writing this, I realized that I have my own favorite. It’s a classic car that I own and that I interact with psychologically the same way I did with my favorite toys when I was ten. Driving the classic car, maintaining it, dreaming of doing more with it; is really adult play, giving me those same feelings that inspired me to play with those favorite toys when I was 8-years-old. I don’t know whether to be embarrassed or proud that I can still be a kid.

Our toys are the transports of our imagination to places we want to be, things we want to become or the way we want to feel about ourselves. It seems like an awful lot to expect from something as simple as a toy. But toys, however, work. They were created by humans in order to unlock and build imagination, healing, and comfort and have been perpetuated through millennia because of that. Not convinced? Just ask any teddy bear whose presence helped a small child through what psychologists call separation anxiety. However, just make sure they don’t catch you talking to teddy bears because if you did, well, you might just be getting in touch with your inner child all over again. 

And that like the earlier suggestion for world leaders to start talking about their favorite toys, may not be such a bad idea.

Citations of the research data found in this article can be found in The Association for Psychological Science article, “Toy Stories” by Etienne Benson published, December 2006.