How toys can affect our children

As kids we all have dreams about what we want to become. Some people aspire to be airline pilots, Formula 1 drivers and all other fancy things. What we do and experience as kids will condition what our dreams are for the rest of our lives, so as a parent I’d want to make sure to eliminate any negative items from your loved ones’ childhood.

We tend to try and take guns away from our children, but there are other toys which might be harming them without us even knowing. Take Barbie for example, girls grow up with a size zero doll who they adore, fixing in their mind forever the idea of “a perfect body”.

My inspiration for this topic comes from my university professor, who brilliantly decided to build all toys for his grandchild himself out of wood. His theory is simple, “I don’t want other companies to raise my grandson” he used to say.  As a result, he built toys in such a way as to ensure that the kid can improve his visual skills, and predict what the toy will do by observing “acceleration” of objects, and thus accelerating his mental development.

Finally, on a lighter note, we can use toys simply to encourage our kids to pursue specific activities. Letting your kids play with Lego, will for example inspire structural engineering, the interest in building great stuff that stands still. So we might even be looking at career inspiration as well.