The Case for Creative Play in a Digital Age

I feel like the child’s peer group matters a lot in this. Being stricter than average about technology can backfire if kids feel left out and uncool as a result. My 9-year-old recently told me he feels like he doesn’t fit in at school because we don’t allow video games in our house, but that’s what all of his friends are into and all they talk about (usually Fortnite). And all of his friends have smart phones and data plans. This is a third-grader! He may be more creative because he often engages his imagination in play and also reads voraciously, but he feels isolated because no one else at his school gets him—they’re all too busy talking about video games and apps and smart phones.

I can't help thinking about the power of advertising when I read about the desire for the Easy-Bake Oven. The saddest part is how our children and ourselves are manipulated into thinking any item is the be-all and end-all and we get obsessed with acquiring it.

Be like Steve Jobs and the whole coterie of highly worshipped 20th century titans of industry in the Silicon Valley -- no screens. Just no screens.

Football (flag for kids), basketball, baseball. Perhaps substitute volleyball for football, or add hockey depending on the climate. All these notions of eliminating sports due to ‘toxic maculinity’ are creating a generation of couch potatoes. Throw away batteries, get a tire pump with a pin for balls.

For the brief period children are oblivious to the world about them, these engage in their own make shift reality...play. For play these devise their own forms of amusement. Adults need only provide an environment...a 'play ground'. By 3 most are no longer oblivious to adult activity. A child attempts to push its carriage, or carriage with a doll. The adult considers pushing the carriage 'work'. The child considers it play. The adult carries a grocery package...part of the day's work, the child too desires to carry a package for the day's play. It is this process of emulation that gets muddled. With each passing day the child comes closer to desiring the perceived playing of adults. All adult activity is perceived as play. A drive in the car is the fathers play. At the amusement park the child sees motor carts and wants its own turn to play with a'car'. Adults acting silly, imitating clowns, will for a while amuse the child. Painting the child's face to resemble Mickey Mouse may also amuse. Inevitably the child catches-on what amuses adults is clutching/fondling a small device. Often there are wires from the adult 'toy' attached to the head. Once the child has caught-on to this form of amusement it is difficult to divert it to crayons. And with media extolling 'digital literacy' the parent observing the child's fondness for the device feels a blush of satisfaction with the offspring's early-on adaption to the digital era. It is the adult's play that matters.

I think we’ve all figured out, or been told enough times, that screens are bad for children. but in a world where people have a little patience for disruptions, and perhaps especially those created by other people’s noisy or misbehaving children, it’s hardly surprising that frantic parents thrust iPhones and tablets in front of the little ones. Playing with children takes time and patience; things in short supply these days. The best gift one can give a child this holiday season is that of time and patience.

the Academy also recommends that you serve your children a diet consisting mostly of spinach and boiled chicken.

Has anyone else noticed that not only are toys more technical/screen-oriented, but more gender specific than they were in the 80s-90s? I wanted to buy my 1-year-old grandson a baby doll for Christmas b/c my son had loved his boy doll when he was a toddler, but the only dolls I could find in the store were not only clearly female, but glittered within an inch of their doll-lives. I did find an adorable, soft, gender-neutral baby doll (with a magnetic pacifier :)) online. So much for shopping local.

I take issue with the comment "parents are getting all of these messages about how screens and tablets and mobile devices and laptops are the thing that’s going to help their children to learn and become advanced in their development.” From who? From where? Is this really true? I've never heard this. The dominant narrative in my sphere of doctors, fellow parents, teachers, and media sources is limit screen time as much as possible for it is terrible. Just wondering how much of a bubble I'm in.

Say what you will about dolls, but they were probably my biggest source of creative play as a child. The form really didn't matter. Barbie or stuffed animal or figures meant strictly for display. (My father was in the Navy and frequently brought me back display dolls such as a Spanish flamenco dancer, a Thai dancer, and Czech folk dancer. I used them all ruthlessly with my Barbies.) I spent hours projecting personalities, stories, and conversations from my imagination on those dolls and stuffed animals. I loved them all to a ragged death.

Play is an indispensable tool in the child's tool box. It serves them with a powerful medium to create, buffer their unpleasant encounters with a world the seek to understand, helps them to fuel their self worth as they proudly show their creations off to admiring adults, and it helps them to emote and shed unacceptable feelings and urges which otherwise would result in inner conflicts or unpleasant clashes with those who are entrusted to their care. Toys which don't speak to these areas don't really encourage play and they don't in all too many cases do anything more than fill the pockets of the electronic creators and provide little in the way of cognitive, moral or interpersonal skill development or real pleasure. Fantasy is the stage upon which behavior us rehearsed and sadly electronics don't fill the bill - they have a place but I'm not sure it qualifies as play.

This article says why today's Legos bug me. In my Easy-Bake and Creepy Crawlers childhood, Legos were a bunch of blocks. Nothing else. They could be buildings, airplanes, monsters, whatever. Now Legos are mostly kits that are designed to be one thing, or maybe a couple, after following specific directions. A Star Wars X-Wing might be cool, but it can't be a truck of a model of my sister's face. If a toy doesn't hurt to step on, it's probably not worth it.

I completely agree with the thought that the best toys are those that are simple, physical and that inspire creativity, curiosity, and imagination. I was a kid in the 1960s and fondly recall the toys that were mentioned. My parents bought my sibling and I toys such as LEGO (the old fashioned kind with blocks in primary colors to snap onto a gray base). They also bought us science related toys including a microscope and a something akin to a Petri dish filled with a clear gel; you plant a seed in the gel and then watch how the seed germinates. Does anyone recall the name of that toy? But what I really remember fondly were the “caves and tunnels” we made out of blanket-covered TV trays, and houses made out of large appliance boxes, etc. I had so much fun! I hope kids today have opportunities to play with everyday objects to exercise their creative muscle.

Very easy rule for a successful children's toy: Anything which does NOT require a battery or electric charge!

My easy-bake oven began my career as a baker and caterer. After I used up the cake mix packet the toy came with, I opened my mother's recipe books to mix up every kind of cookie batter listed. I was really patient and baked one or two cookies at a time in that little oven powered by one light bulb. To this day I am the best baker in my circle of friends.

Speaking as a speech/language pathologist, I'd heartily agree that the importance of creative play for the development of language and cognitive skills cannot be overstated. The more children can use and develop their own imaginations, the more they will derive from their play and the richer and deeper it will be. Try to buy or create open ended toys, such as blocks, nesting dolls, shapes/sizes puzzles, figures, play phones, etc. Play with your child using these toys but also allow them to play by themselves. Stimulate them by expanding on what they say rather than peppering them with questions such as "What is this called?" Have a real back and forth conversational exchange rather than an interrogation. Language development around play is a beautiful thing to watch, and parents are their children's first and best teachers. Based on what I've observe (and we're all guilty of it at times), try to avoid overstimulation as well. Too much talking by the parent can reduce the child to auditory overload. And, for the most part, ditch the batteries. Pots and pans and an old television box can be absolutely miraculous in a child's hands.

Thankfully my parents scrounged up the money to buy an old used piano. It was the ultimate “toy.” When they saw how I was drawn to it, they sacrificed to give me lessons, starting at age 4. Now my entire career is built around music, it’s how I met my husband, and I have a lifelong joy and skill and talent to develop and share.

Yesterday I was playing with my 2-year-old and 4-year-old and the screams of joy were so deafening that my husband came down from upstairs to see what we could possibly be doing that was so much fun. Well, the kids were placing little pieces of paper in a pile on the table, and asking me to be a tornado - so I'd flap a large, thin book at the shreds to blow them all over the room, up into the air swirling around. So simple, yet so powerful. I don't understand why anybody would give young kids a screen, when they are so easily entertained by just about anything at that age! You will never get such ease of entertainment ever again! Why waste it? It takes so little to make them happy, and it has all the great benefits for everybody involved. Even if I don't have the time to play tornado with them all day, they can play it just as well with each other. My kids have never watched TV or touched a screen yet in their lives, and they didn't know what to ask Santa for because they don't watch commercials. But you know what? They are happy and full of joy and creativity, and ahead of their peers in language and cognitive development. It can be done, you just have to put in the effort.

My favorite toys by far were my Lionel electric trains. I still have them and run a page which has tons of pictures of old toys and trains if you remember yours... https://www.facebook.com/PreWarTrains/?ref=settings

At the end of the memo, the pediatricians also advised parents to get those darned kids off their lawn. Anyone who thinks digital games preclude creativity has never seen a kid playing Minecraft.

It is hard to understand how a dozen paragraphs purporting to promote open-ended, imagination-stimulating toys turns into a reminiscence on the Easy-Bake oven--no blocks, wooden trains, real tools, dress-up clothes, art supplies and the like. For nostalgia (and some seat-of-the-pants physics), I suggest the (non-gendered) Slinky.

My girlfriend was a rancher's daughter. As we sat around the Christmas tree in rural Alberta unwrapping this or that toy, with a half dozen young children tearing at paper wrap, my girlfriend's grandpa sitting beside me in his favourite chair muttered to himself......'a stick and a puddle'...I asked him 'grandpa, sorry, did you say something? He repeated...'that's all they need....a stick and a puddle...'

In a child’s hands anything becomes a toy. To those of you who feel good toys are hard to come by, here are some suggestions: a cardboard box—preferably one in which the child can crawl into. A plastic tote filled halfway with sand. Toy cars and trucks. Toy boats. Toy people. Toy airplanes. Toy tools. Wood blocks of different shapes, or the same. Dolls of different sizes and skin shades. Tea cups and saucers. Pots and pans. Plates. Crayons and paper. Dress-up clothes. A doll house. A blanket and some dining room chairs. And so on.

A high school class that was startlingly important in my career as an R&D chemist was machine shop. I've shifted gears and am getting into jewelry making, and once again, machine shop. I wouldn't have learned those skills playing Minecraft, or taking courses in MS Office. Those spatial skills can be useful in even seemingly unrelated tasks, such as computer programming, and imagination is by default outside-the-box thinking.

I know that I'm setting myself up here for extreme parental scorn, but...oh well...here goes. My two sons were passionately into video-games while they were in elementary and middle school. I never understood why they didn't they want to read or do art projects or something less, oh, "video". I suppose I could have stopped this (maybe) but I remember that my childhood seemed full of arbitrary prohibitions about the issues of the day and how all it taught me was how to be sneaky. Fast forward to high school, this largely fell off on its own. Too much other stuff to do. Now they are both adults. My older son is a teacher and reads fiction for his book group and tells me which ones I should put on my wish list at the library. My younger son is still an avid gamer together with every other 20-something at the tech company where they are employed. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm glad I didn't waste a lot of energy making a huge fuss about this.

One of my fond memories from childhood is the time I wanted a laser for my birthday. This was before cheap laser pointers were widely available. My parents, not knowing what to do about a child who wouldn’t ask for reasonably available presents, gave me a box of random construction detritus leftover from the building of our house and an empty control panel from an industrial steel cutting laser-an uncle who worked in a factory may have had something to do with that. The imaginary laser I built completely defended our house from all kinds of space invaders.

I have a six year old and we do this. He only gets to watch a movie with us on Sunday mornings and that's his only screen time. No video games, no phone, no ipad. Instead, he's got loads of good toys to play with. Just last weekend he created a whole "secret club house" in a corner of his room, complete with a piece of cardboard with a drawn on key pad for entering the password. He also dug into my sewing/craft supplies, found some yarn, and proceeded to cut long pieces to drape across the entry to make like a privacy curtain. This occupied him for a few hours and he was so so happy. Now he loves to sit in his club house to draw or read. We intend to encourage this creativity and exploration. I feel like we are doing the right things, but am still scared of the hold that digital products can have on kids. My coworker always complains that her 13 year old doesn't interact with her anymore and is always playing video games (and now he's having trouble in school and seems to have social issues). This terrifies me, but also pushes me to work hard to avoid digital devices altogether (both for him and for us).

Wooden blocks. Enough said. After a little research on the “best” kind of toy for kids, we bought a nice set of blocks for less than $50 (Melissa & Doug I think) for our young boys. This set has lived in our living room for years since, and no shortage of castles, museums, cities, secret bases, airports, you name it — have been created since. Hands down the best toy we have bought. It helps to build with them at first and seed ideas... and then there is no limit to what their imaginations can create.

No mention of board games. There are many fascinating boardgames (i.e., that deal with ponies, spaceships, aliens, monsters, superheroes or wizards) that can be played with young children, as long as the parents are patient and at least somewhat invested in the game. Some games are very cooperative. Chutes and Ladders, Candyland, Sorry, Go Fish, Uno and Skipbo can give way to classics like Operation,Yahtzee, Life, or Scrabble; Chess, Go, Sudoku; Space Base, Pokemon, Magic, Dominion, Settlers of Catán. We have been playing Not Alone (a card game where you hide from an alien menace) that my six-year-old grandson has transferred/translated into "Not Alone in Real Life." It is basically hide-and-seek, but the entire family plays and we have loads of fun. Try to avoid the screens-- when the little ones make up "Escape the Facility," make the effort (even though you are tired) to play--

Independent toy stores are closing left and right everywhere. Parents no longer buy what a lot of these shops offered. Get the kids an electronic gizmo and everyone seems to be happy. And how can kids miss the things they never had? Junk food for their minds and development is easier and undeniably more addictive.

Where's the science to back up the recommendation? A lot of speculation about how kids develop, but no evidence.

I often have children in the waiting room at my office, and I have a wide array of traditional toys - large baskets of building toys, a basket of toy vehicles, puppets, Etch a Sketch, paper and markers - and a bulletin board to display children's creations, books, board games, puzzles, and a Magic 8 Ball. It never fails to delight me when children are busily and happily engaged in playing with these simple - and very fun - toys.

As a parent of a 3-year-old, I agree that imaginative play and parental interaction are fantastic learning opportunities. Unfortunately, as discussed in a NYT article from Oct 26 (The Digital Gap Between Rich and Poor Kids), many children in low-income households still stare at screens more hours per week than children in wealthier families. This may be partly the parents responsibility; during my time living abroad in a low-income neighborhood, I have seen numerous parents pacify children by handing them a phone. In addition to proclaiming the benefits of creative play and direct parental attention, what else can we do to empower families of all backgrounds and demographics to innovatively engage together?

Best "toy" my twins had in the late 80s was the box the Gateway computer came in. They loved the cow pattern and the sturdiness of the box. They would climb up there and jump off. I know because I have the video to prove it. We all watched it during Thanksgiving and the kids were "bug-eyed" that I let them do that.

Of the tens of thousands of years of human evolution, it has only been a couple of years that toys are available that a child can’t understand how they work. We live in a time where we know what a device does but have no idea how it does it, and for the most part, how it does it doesn’t concern us. Play is supposed to teach a child how the world works. If a child is playing with a computer controlled device, that child is deprived of a crucial benefit of creative / investigative play.

It’s hard to find good toys.

As a child therapist, I have learned that play (actual creative play) in which the child is interacting with objects and a person, is remarkably therapeutic. It helps the child identify feelings and thoughts and thus move forward developmentally. Children don’t necessarily have the vocabulary to express themselves and so play becomes their ‘psychological work’. And they have fun doing it. What could be better?

Also as my parents always said and made us do, chores!

Creative play and play in general is highly incomplete when you don't interact at a social level with your peers or others in your presence. In other words, multi-player digital games has you interacting with a digital entity, not a human entity. A lot of developmental skills can be lost or never acquired with type of "play." A game of Scrabble or Monopoly has you speaking with others...so much better for youngsters, and the rest of us.

As the child of two parents in graduate school, there was no budget for "toys". My toys were found objects that I found some way to play with. When you have two objects you can arrange them in space. They "interact". What emerges from this is spatial reasoning, and imposition of "operating rules" for how these objects may interact (rules made by the child). It turns out, these two "concepts" are the basis for ALL of mathematics. Dare I say this? Yes, I do. That was and is my career, and I have to think, for hours every day, in an unfamiliar n-dimensional space (where n is very large) and set theory (which involves a set of elements, and the operations that can be done on that set). ...All just from playing with "rocks and blocks" as a child.