TOO MANY TOYS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 91, 8 December 1931, Page 2

TOO MANY TOYS

K "" : - . ! JtJVENiLE APPRECIATION TENDS TO BECOME BLASE. PLEA BY AN OLD-FASHfONED WOMAN. Probably many mothers will hotly refute it, but th.ere is something very lazy about a haphazard lavishing of toys on babies and young children. "Let's get that for Jack. It will keep the little beggar' amused for hours," says Jack's father enthusiastically, the motive behind the generosity being a completely unconscious desire to, amuse his son with the minimum of . trouble. So the expensive, elaborate toy is bought, handed to the already surfeited infant, and everyone, except the recipient, feels very good indeed about it all. Bored and Blase. , ' Already the nurser'y is getting rather short of space on account of that massive. omnibus, that elaborate clockwork train, and ihe conglomeration of toys that have been showered on the child at regular intervals aver since the child was born. "• And usUally the blase little owner of* all these contributions .to his amusement is a rather bored, sorry iittle hoy who regards his possessions -with a jaded eye .and .considers them "not much fun, ariyway, once you know how they work." I would like to ceftsor all nurseries run on tbese Iines, and dole out toys with a reluctant hand, instead of generously spilling them all over the place. Have a "Train Day." All those delightful self-working models would. be kept for certain days, to be brought out as a real treat. Only on one day a week would I allow the clockwork train .to run, and I am .certain that "train day" would occupy a very important part. in the child's calendai*. There w"ould be days when toys would be reiegated entirely either to the attic or some lumber - room out of sight, and the child turned loose to find his own amusement. 1 might unbend sufficiently to give him a few pieces of wood, some nails, and a hammer (sufficiently light to cause little damage if directed other than at the nails), or perhaps some old magazines, a paste pot, aiid a pair of scissors. With these he woUld have ample opportunity to devise his own toys, and if he were bored in these circumstances I would admit my experiment a f ailure. But I am certain I wouldn't have to. There is so much native ingenuity in a child, so much imagery and ambition that an opportunity to develop these qualities is very eagerly seized upon. I would probably find the deprived one light-heartedly sailing a cut-out figure in an empty mateh box on a lalce in a bowl of water with other cut-out figures watching admiringly from the "bank." Or laboriously making a truck — resembling a very poor relative of Puffing Bill — on which to take rides in the garden. His Own Creation. Or, perhaps I would discover him, armed with a quantity of used omnibus tickets, a peaked cap, and the run of the kitchen chairs, ftiaking a very poor caricature of his working model lying in solitary grandeur in the attic, or having the time of his life as a train driver with ability to drive a train that the driver of the Flying bcotsman might erivy. He will love these things because they are in his own creation, and think all the more of the real toys because of their perfection and temporary absence.