Select your babies toys smartly.

Why toys are important?

If you’ve ever been amazed at the look of concentration on a child’s face trying to fit a square block into a square hole or catch a ball in the middle of the air, you know it’s not just about fun and matches. Toys are more than just playthings, and while they should be enjoyable, they should be age-appropriate, stimulating, and secure as well. “The social, mental, physical and emotional growth of kids is so crucial to play. Toys should be considered to be instruments of developmental learning. At the sight of toys, your kid’s eyes light up. His appeal for toys seems to be instinctive. Maybe that’s because toys meet his imagination requirements and need to explore, pretend, and share. Not only are toys fun, they can also be useful instruments for making your child intelligent–and they’re preparing him for the abilities he needs to be an adult.

What type of toys should be introduced?

1. Keep it easy

Toys that do too much do not allow their own imagination to be used by a kid. Dolls and stuffed pets speaking or singing or guiding children to press certain buttons take over the play scenario when the kid should be the one directing the action. If a toy is too specific, it is restrictive and denies the child the ability to use his imagination.

2. Choose the toys you need to imagine

These are toys that leave the imagination to play. Avoid toys that can be played in just one or several ways. Toys running on the imagination of your child are better than those running on AA batteries.

3. Choose toys that will allow your kid to do something like snapping or shaping them together

They enhance the spatial intelligence and depth of perception of your child. The forms, colors and sizes he also learns.

4. Give your child a range of toys where a range of abilities can be learned

Toys that encourage dramatic play such as blocks, toy vehicles, toy pets, puppets and props to recreate true life like a shop assist your child “work out his own world thoughts.” Toys that encourage manipulative play such as building sets, puzzles, and interlocking parts toys assist your child create tiny muscle control and hand-eye coordination. Creative arts toys such as blank paper parts, paints, scissors, glue, and clay foster self-expression and the use of symbols, which are essential abilities for problem-solving and literacy. Toys promoting physical activity such as bicycles, jumping ropes, balls letting your kid work off energy and building power and coordination. Strategy games such as card games, dominoes, chess and checkers teach your kid how to turn around, plan, follow guidelines, and work with teammates or opponents.

5. If you give your child your chosen toy, don’t just hand it over to him and then shoot him off to play

Play with your kid, describe how the toy is working and what fun it is. Playing with your child will make him feel loved, and this will improve his teaching. Observe if he’s getting really interested. If not, he may find the toy too advanced. Keep it until it’s prepared.

6. Insert one or two fresh toys at a moment

Your child is overwhelmed by too many decisions, particularly if he’s a child. You child are more likely to make the most of every toy and be comfortable with his familiarity by adding fresh toys to his collection slowly.

7. Check that the toy is secure

This applies particularly to your baby or very young child. For example, make sure that there are no holes in your baby’s rattle that trap his fingers. Children enjoy placing toys in their mouth (as well as other holes in their body), so prevent toys that can swallow and choke on your child. Check for toys that are intended to carry its weight and are durable for your elderly kid.

8. Store toys to stimulate your child to play with them

Such as arranging them in small scenes or other creative arrangements. Don’t just dump it all in a toy box where your child doesn’t even remember what’s inside.

9. Set boundaries on video games and electronic toys

We live in an electronic age, and any parent who believes they can maintain their kid— even a kid— away from computers and the like is kidding themselves forever. But, particularly for young children, setting boundaries is essential. Research has suggested that electronic toys pose several potential hazards to the health and growth of children, including hearing, weight gain etc.

How many toys are sufficient?

According to Houston-based social worker and psychotherapist Vicki Sherman, who has comprehensive experience in treating and working with infants and kids through play therapy, your child should have three to five exciting stuff to play with. She explained in an interview with Romper, “Your baby doesn’t need 10 toys. Three to five exciting items to look at and feel are definitely enough.” Sherman also shared that children do not necessarily need toys specifically sold as toys. Instead, Tupperware, balls, pots and pans can all be used as toys for a baby.
So, what are you supposed to look for when you collect a toy basket for your child to play with? “Toys that are tactile,” suggests Sherman, “and not just stuffed animals, but textured and coloured stuff.” Other characteristics that create excellent baby toys are items that a child can open and close (which they are likely to do constantly, occupying them much longer than you would imagine) and objects or toys that have faces, which babies are known to gravitate toward.

Don’t underestimate your kid while selecting mind toys

Choose toys that are suitable for your child’s era in terms of development – if it is too advanced for him, he may be disappointed with how hard it is to play, and he will give it up. Worse, he might even be injured. He will find it boring if the toy is for a younger era. Exploration is all about playing in the first year of life. To learn about the exciting new globe around them, babies use their five senses: Does an object feel difficult or soft? Embroidered or rough? What if I drop it off? Or placed it in the mouth of me? Most game involves “tasting” or mouthing an item and shaking it, banging it or dropping it. Play becomes more organized and complicated when your child develops fresh motor skills.
For instance: children start reaching and grasping items at about 4 months of age, like a rattle.
They can move that rattle between hands by six or seven months.
A newly developed pincer grasp at approximately 9 months makes it simpler for children to pick up smaller items, such as blocks and other small-age toys.
During this moment, play is generally a solitary activity, but at the end of the year it is prevalent to play side by side with other children and to imitate activities. These interactions assist your child learn language, social relationships, and cause and effect. Once children start to comprehend how things relate to each other in the setting and how they taste, smell, feel, and sound, children are prepared for the next developmental phase: to figure out how they function.

Conclusion

A child staring at a mobile; a kid stacking blocks; a pre-school painting with aquarelles— all is independent activities. But don’t underestimate the part you play. It’s you, after all, who put the phone on, switched it on, and urged your child to follow. It’s you who first showed how to stack those blocks to your child. And by sitting side by side with your children and painting, coloring, or reading a tale, you offer them the attention they need to construct their self-esteem and feel loved and safe. Toys are an instrument for helping children grows, but parents nurture this development.