Once your kid has graduated infancy, the learning process becomes a little more complex. A year ago, they were learning how to eat solid food by chewing on a pillow. They were learning what would eventually allow them to read by staring at the mobile above their crib going around and around. Now it’s time to start thinking about reading, mathematics, basic building and organizational skills, further social development… the list goes on.
The wrong way to go about teaching these skills, and certainly you know one or two parents like this, is to treat the educative process too much like… well, academics. You don’t want to turn learning into something boring, with worksheets and assignments and so on. Learning should be fun, and if you teach that at a young age, it will remain with your child through their whole life.
So really, toys are a pretty important part of learning basic skills in a fun, exciting way. If you hand a kid a blackboard and tell him to write the alphabet, he’s going to get bored. But, if you hand the kid some alphabet fridge magnets, he’s going to write his name on the fridge. If he gets a little ambitious, maybe he’ll piece them together to say “Hi Mom”, or any number of things. That’s what making learning fun is about, treating it like a game, not like a chore. In fact, that’s what learning is all about in the first place. It’s all about pursuing your own curiosities, conquering your own challenges, and enjoying life as it comes.
From infancy on, playing is vital to cognitive, social, and physical development. When you see a kid putting together his Go Diego Go playset, he’s playing, yeah, but he’s also learning a little something about how the world works, how to set goals and reach them. When you see a kid pitting his Luke Skywalker action figure against Darth Vader, he’s just having fun, but he’s also learning something important about human interaction.
You know, in psychotherapy, there’s a lot of stuff that’s kind of ambiguous, stuff that’s up for debate, but the importance of playing is not amongst them. No competent children’s psychotherapist in the world disagrees with this notion: Playing is critically important for human development.
Worth noting is the Sudbury School Model of Democratic Education. This model is named for the Sudbury Valley School, where playing is seen not only as vital and necessary, but as something very serious, something not to be compromised or restricted. Eighty percent of Sudbury graduates went on to graduate from college, and most have gone on to become very successful in life.
We can recommend any number of excellent toys to encourage positive development during play, from developmental toys to educational games. There are hundreds of great items to choose from, but you know… as long as you’re nurturing your child’s interests, as long as you’re providing them with a degree of fun challenge, it’s very hard to go wrong. Playing with a variety of fun toys is one of the most important steps to becoming a successful, happy adult, so keep your children playing, keep them active, keep them learning, and, eventually, they’ll thank you for it.
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