We are in October and that means that many parents are already thinking about the Christmas season, for what we are going to give to our children, and for what we are going to tell family members who want to give something to our children.
I guess like all parents around this time we are saying that about "This year, no toys". And we have children who are a little older and live in a continuous process of redistribution of toys, elimination when they are not used and renewal when birthdays and dates.
So what, when we talk about children and toys, often less is more.
An excess of toys is counterproductive
To explain this issue, the first thing is to limit the amount starting with the lot: more is less. When there are too many toys children tend to be little constant in their games, as if in a way they were forced to vary often to play with many of them, when it is more enriching to have a good time playing a specific thing that motivates them, than to vary very often because they immediately leave a toy or game to move on to the next.
On the other hand, if there are many toys, children can always come to them to play, as if it were not possible to play without toys. If this happens, your creativity and imagination become lazy; eye, of course when they have toys they create and imagine, but when they have many, they don't have to create or imagine so much.
In addition, it is difficult to find a place for everyone, and in a way they are stacked and piled up, so that the value of each of them is lost a little (at the risk of becoming increasingly capricious), and even the place . In many cases they end up on any site because they no longer fit, or on the ground, or in areas where the child does not arrive or does not see them ... On the other hand, a more controlled number of toys will make each one have their specific place, which it is easy to keep them because even he knows where they are going and that even, for that reason, I can see or catch them whenever I want, which is ideal.
Can a child live without toys?
Less is more, but how much? Because the least of all is zero. Have zero toys. And not having any toys doesn't have to be better than having a few toys.
The reality is that yes, a child can live without toys because the important thing in children is the game. The children must play. Moreover, it is a right of children who can do it. But playing is not something that can be done exclusively with toys; It can be done with them and without them. Or do you always play them with a toy whenever you see them play?
However, we know that toys are facilitating elements of the game (normally, because there are toys that do not achieve that goal), and this means that being able to live a child without toys, it is advisable that, if it can be, it does have some .
Often less is more
The fact is that we do not say "less is more" to dry, but "Often less is more", because it’s the way to say that if they have many, they better have less.
The reasons are those that we have already begun to explain above: so that they value them, so that they know where they are going, so that they are not forgotten because they are at the bottom of a box with many more toys, so that they can see and count them with them, so that the excess of visual stimuli does not overwhelm them (when they see many toys, and often scattered, they tend to be a little more "messy" in their way of being, playing, behaving ...), so that they have space available in the ground to develop their games and can focus on what at that time goes through their heads, in the games they are imagining, and so that they get "the juice" to each of them.
As we say, having many toys can make the game more inconsistent and give less space to creativity and inventiveness. Having a more limited number forces children to get more out of themselves, to invent new scenarios, new stories and new ways to play with the same toys.
There are even parents who promote game times without toys so that children strive to create, to make the game possible without them, to invent new ways of having fun (or as Lola told us three days ago, families that directly eliminate them completely).
And it is true that children have to receive stimuli to develop their potential, but in many cases the stimuli are not few, but too many: too many drawings on TV, too much time with the tablet playing too many different games, too many toys, Too many whims and in the end it turns out that if they lack all this, expendable items, they die of boredom because they don't know what to do. And worst of all: they often die of boredom when they have all that and more, precisely because they have hardly ever developed the innate ability of children to invent and create games from nothing (or a controlled number of toys).
If we give them the chewed game, they will never have to plant it, grow it, pick it up and eat it themselves. If they don't use their creativity, they will run out of it, like many children and adults today.
