When Toys Lose Their Magic

"Go play," and its counterpart, "Go play with your toys," are two phrases that can often be heard 'round these parts. As parents, we invest in playthings for our little ones (or over-indulge, depending on the amount of restraint one shows) and then we're often frustrated when they don't translate into the long minutes (even hours) of playful bliss that were sold to us as part of the package. It's not just the thing that you buy or make for the child that enthralls you, it's the possibility that they will be transported to a timeless place once that darling little thing is in their grip.

But our toys have been losing their magic--how about yours? Recently I realized this was because we had gone on auto-pilot with them. We were using them as a distraction. Here--You build with the blocks while I sit next to you and watch, and perhaps I will talk to the other parent or let my mind wander while you do so. Or--You go play in your room while I clean the apartment/make dinner/fill-in-the-blank. Now, there may be a time and a place for this posture towards toys, but when it's the only posture being modeled, it's no wonder the juices of imagination begin running dry.

I learned this the morning my two-year-old and I played with the green ball. The green ball is a big bouncy one, the kind you buy from a big cage in the grocery store, but because of the altitude change when we moved from the Mile-High City (Denver, CO) to Brooklyn, our big green ball is filled to less-than capacity. We played with the green ball for an hour, and I saw that what had been missing was me being inventive with her about how such a toy could be used. For an hour or more, we explored every way of playing with the green ball we could think of. We sat on it and bounced up and down. We bounced it off our foreheads. We rolled, caught, threw, and my girl laughed infectiously the whole time.

Now, I probably can't do inventive play like this every waking minute, but making room for it brings our toys to life and teaches my kids that there's more than one way to use things, that experimentation is fun, and that adding more playthings is never the answer to bringing back the magic. Learning to love what you've got and make your fun with what you have on hand is the real treasure.

What toys can you go play with today--theirs or yours?

An original NYC Moms Blog post. Jen Lee is the author of the brand-new collection, Fortunes.  Find your fortune at jenlee.net.