If there is anything worse than wasting money to appear to have purchasing power, it is wasting money spending lots of gifts and toys for boys and girls of very young age who will not even benefit from this sacrifice.
But giving lots of toys is not just a way to ensure that spending does not turn into greater happiness for the little ones. In fact, there are reasons to think that being too “kind” with the amount of gifts, for example on a birthday or Christmas, not only does not add stimulation and satisfaction, but rather subtracts. Why is this happening? Let’s see it.
There are a lot of socially normalized customs and habits that lead us to bet everything on abundance when giving gifts to boys and girls. It is a kind of ritual in which not only the desire to please the little ones in the house intervenes.
There is also an obsession so that it does not seem that as fathers and mothers we are not capable of providing all the care necessary to shape the precious happy childhood From this point of view, buying a lot of toys is playing it safe, not leaving any corners uncovered.
However, the logic of the mind is somewhat more complex than the simple activity of adding gifts that separately cause well-being in those who consume them. This is, at least, what is indicated by an investigation whose results have been published in the scientific journal Infant Behavior and Development and deals with the case of boys and girls a few months old.
For this study, children of both sexes whose ages were between 18 and 30 months were used. These experimental subjects were divided into two different groups, which would serve to test the way in which the quantity of toys influences the quality of the game. To each of the members of the first group he was given a total of 4 toys while those who belonged to the second group each had 16 toys within their reach.
From these experimental conditions, the research team was able to verify how the quality of the game, measured from the time spent in the game and the variety of activities carried out with the toys, was much higher in the group in which there was only a few toys within reach of boys and girls. Why is this happening? The key is indecision and distraction as we will see.
The importance of concentrating on the game
Something as simple as having several stimuli at your fingertips, and not just a few, can completely change the way we think, and the way we think. In the case of the little ones, who They do not have a sufficiently developed nervous system When it comes to dealing with a lot of information at once, having too many options can make it difficult to focus on something (and the ability to focus on something is more limited the younger you are).
That is why, when it comes to giving gifts, less is more. Something as simple as the absence of many gifts is a positive value, because it makes it possible for the option that really matters to appear: that of connecting emotionally with the toy, giving it a meaning that is important to oneself, even if it is in the virtual world. of one’s own imagination.
After all, the game is based on imagining, and for this it is essential that everything is not already done, that there is no room to fantasize. In the same way that a novel allows us to create a tailored fictional world unlike what happens when these stories are brought to the big screen, the little ones in the house have fun exercising their creativity based on the presence of the children. minimal means necessary to begin a stimulating and meaningful story. Excesses are just a brake that must be avoided.
Dauch, C., Imwalle, M., Ocasio, B., Metz, A.E. (2017). The influence of the number of toys in the environment on toddlers. Infant Behavior and Development. 27;50:78-87.
