Toy Story

My sister, a friend of ours, and I were sitting in a café in North East Portland while my husband played outside in the small courtyard with my almost-two year-year old son and our friend’s four year old son. Outside, they were collecting rocks. Our friend’s son was demonstrating his yoga and my husband, quite the yogi himself, gave him new poses to try.

Inside, over coffee and pie, we enjoyed the break from entertaining the “older” children, and indulged in holding my sister’s seven-month old baby. In talking with my sister and friend, we talked about what we often do together: parenting, education, and with my son’s 2nd birthday at the end of the month, and Christmas just around the corner, we talked about toys.

My sister and I have a fear of battery operated single function toys. We like the classic toys, the wooden toys, and especially the toys that represent our values, those from green companies, or small businesses or etsy shop owners or the ones from our own childhoods that we find in thrift stores or our mother’s attic. We want toys that last, that grow with our children that encourage their intellect and creativity in a myriad of ways. Because my husband, son and I spent the last year living abroad, it was easy to get out of owning any battery operated toys. Or toys with television characters. Or toys that were poor quality that would end up orphaned and scattered in a million pieces with no one remembering what the original function of the toy was.

I look out the window into the courtyard and see my son, my husband, and my son’s new four-year old friend running around and playing chase, when my son stops suddenly to pick up another rock for the collection he has growing in his hands. It’s when I catch him in such small moments that I wonder if he really needs toys at all.

But he does, because I don’t want to spend my life outside while he collects rocks, leaves, acorns and acorn tops. Though I really do love these collections of his, I just need him to play independently but safely inside in the evening when I’m trying to get dinner on the table. So for those moments, I do want the good quality toy that entertains him in a myriad of ways while encouraging his intellect and creativity, but does not make heinous noises that might inspire a parental migraine or the making of a martini.

Our friend is a smart, pragmatic parent who views everything as a potential learning opportunity and conversation with her children. She says, “At some point, someone will give you the annoying single function battery operated toy. Either, you don’t put the batteries in it, or you do, and they play with it until the batteries die, and then you explain that at some point, everything dies (unless you want to teach them how to maintain it). Then they leave the toy outside, and it rains, so the toy falls apart and you explain that things eventually fall apart, especially when abandoned. They get it. And then you no longer have to deal with the annoying sound.”

She shrugs in her matter of fact way. I admire her approach to parenting and agree with a lot of her views. Still, the thought of walking into a Toys R Us for my son’s birthday just feels incongruent to who my husband and I are. Later, we instead opt for the gently used wooden play kitchen that we found on craigslist. My husband brings it home; we don’t bother waiting for his birthday to give it to our son. Within minutes, my son is opening the play oven, the play refrigerator, putting his toys inside, taking them out. He spent the rest of the evening playing and pretending. No batteries required.