Those qualities you want to cultivate in your children, all you need to do is give up the toys.

In the first year after Little D was born, I bought a lot of toys. The \”smart toys\” recommended by the cognitive teacher were just the tip of the iceberg. They accounted for less than 10% of Little D\’s toy library, so why didn\’t I write about the rest? Because Little D was already 1 year old when I opened this official account. I am not afraid of not knowing the goods but I am afraid of comparing goods. Through Little D’s personal practice and my own observation this year, I have to admit that I have done a lot of “buy, buy, buy” before. it is wrong. I have never been afraid of making mistakes. After all, human growth requires payment of tuition fees. But every time I make a mistake, I will summarize myself and try to avoid falling in the same place. Starting from Little D’s second year, I slowly and consciously started to “get rid of” toys. After this year of practice, I truly found that fewer toys are more beneficial to children, so I would like to summarize and share them with you. With fewer toys, his concentration is better. Little D has been very short on toys for a long time. After touching this one, he often goes to take a bite of another toy, and then goes to knock on other toys. Every time He just plays with it for a few seconds, as if he is not very interested in all the toys. I even doubted whether she had ADHD. Later, Little D’s pediatrician asked me to take a video of Little D playing with toys to show her. After the video was taken and I watched the playback, I discovered the problem myself. Almost all the things I saw in the camera were toys. I felt dazzled when I saw it myself, let alone a child like this. Naturally, she would be half-hearted and want to see everything, but she can’t do anything. Focus for a long time. Through the video, I also discovered a problem of my own. As soon as I see little D showing a little bit of disinterest in a certain toy, my first reaction is to pick up another toy next to her and say to her, \”Look, this is The gopher burrows!\” Because the toy was so readily available, I never really gave her time to explore or help her discover the interesting aspects of the toy. Now there are only one or two toys on Little D\’s play mat every day, and she is increasingly able to focus on playing for a long time. Fewer toys, more imagination. Toys are like a woman’s wardrobe. The more you buy, the more you will feel like you have nothing to wear. Now that Little D only has \”basic\” toys every day, she cherishes the existing toys even more and can play with new tricks every time. For example, I bought the ring toy when my daughter was 9 months old. She can still play with it, but it is no longer just a ring toy. Sometimes it was a bracelet for her and her dolls to dress up; sometimes it was donuts, which she would turn over and cook, blowing on them and saying, hot, hot, hot, and then feed them to the dolls and small animals after they cooled; sometimes they were donuts. She would hold her telescope to her eyes, and then look at me. Sometimes she would look at the birds outside the window and say happily, \”I saw it!\” Every time I saw this, I couldn\’t help but wonder, if I gave She bought a bracelet, a donut simulation toy, and a telescope. Maybe she wouldn\’t have so many wild ideas. What a loss. There are fewer toys and a stronger sense of order. I have always wondered about one thing. Every time Little D went to early education class, the teacher said that when the toys were sorted, she would cooperate and help put the toys into the basket. but for a long timeEvery day before going to bed, I asked Little D to sort out her toys, but she would not cooperate. She would either throw a few toys into the basket and tell me, \”Okay,\” or she would simply want to run away. Later, I chatted with the teacher in the early childhood education class, and the first question she asked me was, do you have a lot of toys at home? The teacher told me that young children can only handle a single simple task. If they feel that the task is too complicated for them, they will instinctively avoid it. This is why in every early education class, the teacher will ask the children to tidy up after playing with a toy, and then play with the next toy. I was awakened by the teacher\’s words, and when I thought about it, it was true that every time after little D went to sleep, it would take me some time to sort out the toys scattered on the play mat by myself, not to mention a child of such a young age. . Now that there are fewer toys, Little D’s enthusiasm for helping to sort out the toys is really as high as in the early childhood education class. A tidy environment can help children establish a sense of order, and allowing the child to participate in the process of sorting toys can further strengthen her sense of order, so that she can become an orderly person in the future. Of course, buying fewer toys does not mean having no toys. I firmly believe that children should learn through play, and toys are absolutely essential. But now when I buy toys, I no longer blindly follow trends. Every time I read any popular Internet products or recommended articles, I will still rationally filter them based on my own principles. No matter how good they are, I will not buy them. . I won’t go into the principles that everyone is familiar with: focus on quality over quantity, don’t buy the same type twice, and don’t buy toys that are more than one month old. Here are some of my other principles: Don’t buy audio and video products. This is one of the first criteria for “smart toys” that I shared on my official account. Sound and light toys look very cool and are easy to attract children at first. However, after using them, you will find that children lose interest immediately after mastering these sound and light mechanisms. This type of toys lacks \”connotation\”. Moreover, acousto-optical toys will greatly reduce the chance of children talking to themselves or talking to others. Because they are too stimulating and too strong, children are over-surrounded at once, causing them to just passively receive instead of actively thinking (similar to the situation with television). Try to choose open-ended toys or toys with open-ended potential. The so-called open-ended toys do not stipulate that \”must be played this way\”, such as plasticine, building blocks, and balls. Toys with this potential refer to those toys that, although their gameplay is prescribed from the beginning, still have the opportunity to be recreated. For example, the traps I mentioned above, such as some role-playing toys, etc., and this re-creation process is also a good opportunity for parent-child interaction between parents and children. Balance Realism and Abstraction Don’t buy toys for preschoolers that are too abstract, but you need to find a balance here. For example, dolls, wooden dolls without facial features are too abstract for children of this age, but I don’t recommend highly realistic dolls like Barbie. Barbie is too lifelike and pays too much attention to details. A doll itself has everythingAfter telling the child who she is, what she is going to do, and how she feels, there is very little space for the child\’s imagination. What I recommend is the most \”simple\” doll, because the \”simple\” doll has enough space for Little D to recreate and give more life to it: is it happy or sad? Is she a chef, a princess or a teacher? Little D can imagine and interpret more story versions of her. I once heard a joke, \”For women, there is nothing that can\’t be solved with one bag. If so, it can be solved with two bags.\” This is an era where we are used to using material things to fill our spiritual emptiness. Think about it carefully. Isn’t this what it means to buy toys for your children? We keep buying for our children to make up for our own inner sense of lack; we keep buying for our children to make up for our guilt for being absent from our children\’s lives; we keep buying for our children to cover up our laziness in paying attention. An excuse for companionship. Let\’s \”break away\” from toys, so that we and our children can return to the origin of parent-child life – high-quality companionship. Children only need half the number of toys, but they need twice the time of our company. Let’s give them a truly spiritually rich childhood!