Make toys for your kids!

Have you been to a big toy chain store lately? You might be surprised by what you find, or rather by what you can’t find. I was astonished recently when I couldn’t find a baby toy that didn’t light up or make noise. Even simple stacking toys and teethers had batteries! I thought back to when I was a new parent and first started making toys-inspired more by necessity than creativity .  Having a baby immediately after buying our first house made for some lean years. We worried as most parents do, about getting everything our baby would need. Newborn babies really don't need much besides their parents attention and care, but they don't stay little for long.  

My son seemed to instantly become a toddler, his play acting becoming more complex and imaginative, often mimicking our actions in his play. I knew he needed toys and wished we could just run off to the store and get whatever he wanted. But our decision to have me stay home permanently as a full time mom made those kinds of expenses beyond our reach at that time. We improvised, often making things out of  cardboard boxes and whatever materials we had on hand. We made a toy stove out of cardboard and my son used my small saucepan and the toaster oven tray for his "cooking", while I cooked our real dinner. He washed dishes in a big bowl of soapy water while I washed dishes. We made a house out of a refrigerator box. It was purely out of necessity that I figured out ways to make toys, but I discovered that I loved to do it, and my son loved to help.  I cut up old clothes  to make (at first very badly sewn!) copies of the creatures my son drew, and characters from his favorite stories. My sewing skills were not very good then and I would have been embarrassed to show them to others, but my son ( and later my daughter)   was no judge of sewing skills and truly loved them. Where my skills left off his imagination took over. All the time we were making these things I was feeling badly that they were just imitations of what I thought my son really wanted. I couldn't get him the expensive toy kitchen or toy house I had seen in a catalog and I felt badly about that.

When my son developed an obsession for trains we would line up rocks on the path outside and pretend they were train cars. Of course he knew all the right noises to make!  For my son's second birthday we were able to buy him a nice big wooden train set. We were so excited to see his reaction, and thought for sure that he would play with it all day for days on end. He was very happy to see it and did play with it. But he soon wanted to go outside to play with his other trains. We were puzzled until we realized that he meant the rocks that we lined up together. Those rocks were really a train to him. Just as fun, or maybe even more fun than the new store bought set he had just received.

Something finally clicked in my head that day. I had been so conditioned to believe that every child should have that plastic rainbow colored set of stacking rings, an Elmo stuffed animal and whatever other toys were being advertised at the time. Our financial difficulties made it impossible for us to get those things, but it never really occurred to me that I shouldn't want to get those things, and that having them all was not really what was best for my son.

 I had been feeling badly about not being able to provide something for my son, when I was actually giving him something much much better. My son, who is now 15, remembers his cardboard house to this day as one of his favorite things ever. He could draw all over the walls and was a part of the creation of that house.  He remembers the stick villages we built in the back yard and the pipe cleaner people.  How lucky we were to have had the challenges we had, for they taught us great lessons. I  encourage all  parents to try making some toys with your children. They will not care if your stitches are uneven, or if a head is not glued on perfectly.  Why should the toy designers have all the fun of creating? Of course you don't have to make ALL of their toys. There are some amazingly talented toy makers on etsy who still know how to make toys that encourage imagination and don't require batteries. 

However, there is nothing like sewing up the finishing stitches of a doll while your daughter anxiously watches and waits, telling  you what color eyes she wants, or where to put a button. How magic you seem to them-conjuring creatures with your hands.  To encourage a lively imagination in your children  is a wonderful gift that will bless them for the rest of their lives. The time spent together creating is something they will never forget.

this post has been brought to you by Kerstin or chimera