Boy Toys

There are two ways to look at toys. One makes shopping for them easier than the other. You can buy toys based on isn't that cute, it'd be fun for a week, or it fills out my list. The other is harder. It's to see toys as part of the development of a child as their world expands. At first that sounds like no fun toys, but imagination is part of that development. Toys can do a lot to teach a child not only about their world but their minds.

When it comes to gift giving seasons, I have one granddaughter and three grandsons. Boy toys are on my mind for birthdays and Christmas. Actually I love looking through toy stores and take my time in boy and girl aisles. If you spend any time in the toy aisle of say a Target, you know boy toys are currently pretty violently oriented. I'm a grandma. Do I want to buy such for my little guys?

If you have ever raised a son or seen your grandsons play, you know how little boys play and it is using avatars (term used in video games but which means embodiment of self in another form) as violent play substitutes for themselves. If you don't want to see violent toys for boys-- skip the toy aisles. They range from military oriented to sci fi with some monster trucks thrown in, but they are pretty heavily into what can endanger their character and what tactics enable them to successfully fight back.

There could be toy Bolts but animals are more frequently monsters the likes of which I have not seen-- mainly because I avoid violent films. Although I am a big fan of children's films and have quite a collection of the best (in my view) not only for my grandchildren when they come but for me when the world outside seems really mean and disappointing, I am not up on all the latest stuff-- although a little more so after spending time in the boy aisles of Toys 'R' Us. Wrestlers are heroes to boys?

Try to imagine that boys don't want guns as toys. Okay, you tried but if you have been around little boys, you know that if they don't get the guns, they will pretend a stick is a gun or a sword. It's likely part of their nature and probably comes back to testosterone although I am not sure. Has there been a study done on it? I hope not. I know it's not just about parenting.

When my children played, I paid more attention to the details of their games. It basically went-- daughter-- create sweet living environment. Son-- blow them up. Daughter-- that's not nice. Son-- try to play the other way until he got too bored. He didn't get into really creating a sweet living environment until he had a family.

Happily when I got to Tucson I found they had a Toys 'R' Us. I used to love those stores before most closed down anywhere near the farm. So I spent some time there as soon as I could. Well it was about like I remembered for the boy toys. Heck, I wasn't totally thrilled at the Barbies with short skirts and blank expressions. Do they make intelligent looking Barbies these days?

Maybe it's not so much the toy you buy but how you encourage your children to play with them? Although looking at the monsters for sale, I am not sure.

One possible arena of giving boys their fascination with wham bam along with some goals for better ways to think about cultural interactions came from the Playmobil stuff for the smaller boys and the Schleich figures for the older ones. I have bought Schleich figures as gifts-- knights, dragons, elves, cowboys, animals. It was only this Christmas that I began to think more strongly that the code of honor for a knight might provide the needed fantasy as well as the wham bam slam. Knights had a code of honor. They did fight but it was supposedly for higher causes (I mean it's mythology; so understand this is the fantasy not necessarily how it was).

As a grandma, I'd like to give my three little guys toys that help them play in ways that are positive-- enhancing imagination, pretending they are adults through their dolls action figures. Couldn't it be exciting for little boys to pretend to be construction workers, engineers, explorers, cowboys, farmers, policemen, firemen, and only as part of that picture sometimes warriors when necessary?

I don't have a problem with kids having guns as toys if the guns are treated as a real gun would be which means no pointing it at anybody else even in play. Does that ruin the fun of it? Having been raised in a home with guns, raising my own children in such a home, I felt that guns needed to be seen as tools, potentially deadly ones.

When my son was growing up he did have the GI Joe dolls and when he got old enough to decide he was too old for them, unlike me burning the paper dolls, he took his real gun and blew them apart. Since Farm Boss had been more into blowing things apart with big 'firecrackers' in the era where that was possible, I didn't see that as damaging as it could have been... maybe. They both turned into non-destructive men-- so far as I know.

(To find the tradesman doll, I had to turn to eBay, where I have been spending a lot of time online looking through various possible toys. The book, a recommendation from my daughter-in-law, came through Amazon as I didn't see it locally.)