Skip to main content

Secretly, Toys are meant to replace parents

There is an epidemic sweeping across America and it has devastating effects on our children.
The problem: over-stimulation.
The culprit: education.

That's right. In the name of educating our infants and toddlers, companies are marketing to parents that a particular toy engages the senses with "bright lights" and music, engages fine motor skills such as "pushing a button," and "Introduces baby to cause & effect relationships, problem solving, balance skills & more!" 

As Katie and I have seen presents given to Isaiah, or shopped for them ourselves, I have been overwhelmed with how many vibrant colors the toys come in, how many are battery powered, how many play obnoxiously long songs at unfortunate volumes (let's be honest, you can only stand to hear the same sequence of poorly pre-recorded midi songs so many times before something inside of you snaps), and cheaply manufactured parts.

I want to open my own lines of toys called "Stix" (to encourage phonics as well as poor spelling). Stix will be a company that only sells earth-tone wooden toys. No flashing lights, no battery powered speaker chips, no colors that can only be found naturally in the Great Corral Reef...Just. Plain. Wood.

What ever happened to figuring out 50 uses for a 3 foot long stick in the backyard??

Perhaps I am a calloused parent, or perhaps I am uneducated in my limited knowledge of proper methods of developing genius babies, but I am pretty sure that there is such a thing as over-stimulation. If we continue to expose our children to bright lights, noises, and brilliant colors then at a certain point they will expect that amount of stimulation and anything less will dull them. How many cases of ADHD are legitimate and how many are self-learned because of battery-operated toys and handheld smart devices? And how many young adults are resultantly growing up with a better handle on customer service via chat or email instead of phone or in person? How many incidents of multi-tasking while driving are intrinsically related to that toy you had as a child? How many episodes of Sponge Bob have been responsible for occupying a child's afternoon instead of playing outdoors with a parent nearby?

I say it's time to start a revolution. Down with fancy toys! Up with tupperware drum kits! Down with app-driven play time! Up with make-believe!

Long live the imagination!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Casting A Conscientious Vote

Here's the thing America: you nominated two terrible representatives for public office--one "Republican" and one Democrat. Both of their campaign managers have decided that the strongest approach to get elected is to basically claim " at least I'm not them ." Both parties have released ad campaigns to bash the other candidate and both, I might argue, do so quite effectively. Now that I have successfully been persuaded that I should vote for neither candidate (thanks to the other candidate), I am left wondering who there is left to vote for. Certainly there is some candidate who is both qualified as a politician and as a person of reasonable morals?? Enter the 3rd party system. America was founded against a national party system (you can read about that here  for an enlightening time). And yet it is this national party system that has allowed a Democratic convert like Donald Trump to represent the Republican party. Trump knew that the only way to have a

Let's Stop Singing

S omeone recently shared an article with me titled " Let's Stop Singing These 10 Worship Songs ." The author, Corrie Mitchell, is making a point that there are some songs that have made it into the mainstream worship scene that are lyrically weak at best. I believe her ultimate goal is to encourage song writers both to be more conscientious of their lyrics to not neglect theological accuracy at the expense of prose--which is a noble and applauded effort. But with that said, here is my response to her article. Let's stop singing these 10 worship songs. That's right, there are too many important theological statements that are getting left out of worship songs. If congregants don't have the opportunity to proclaim the entire Gospel message in the course of one song then it isn't worth singing. After all, what if that is the only song they ever hear in a worship service? They will be left thinking that the Gospel message is incomplete. That Jesus only die

Jesus Doesn't Care Who You Vote For

There. I said it.  Of all the things Jesus cares about that you get to decide on a daily basis, who you cast your ballot for in the upcoming 2020 election is far from the top of the list.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Jesus doesn't care who the next president is--the Bible is pretty clear that God does care who the governing authorities are (Daniel 2:21)--fact is, he already knows who it will be!  What I am saying is that you have thousands of tiny decisions to make throughout your day. Most of which, God doesn't really care about: Do I wear my red tie or blue tie to work today?  Should I leave my house before rush hour traffic or at the last possible minute? How many helpings of Lucky Charms can I get away with before someone notices how light the box has become? Each decision has its own ripple effect and you have to live the consequences of each micro-decision. But most of our decisions on a day-to-day basis are pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of thing