Give Toy for Enjoyment, Not to Improve a Child’s Skills

Parents shopping for Christmas gifts shouldn’t agonize over whether to buy the latest electronic educational gizmo, but simply ought to buy toys that will make their child happy, a psychologist says.

“Instead of all the garbage about toys being for the right age and developing motor skills, they should give a toy that the kid will enjoy playing with,” said child psychologist Brian Sutton-Smith, a father of five who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.

“If you give your wife a gift of diamonds . . . you want her to wear them on special occasions, don’t you?”

Parents spend about $12 billion on toys each year, and advertisements and catalogues tend to reinforce the popular view that toys should help a child progress, though there’s little evidence to support such a notion, Sutton-Smith said.

“Toys, in effect, have become alibis for parental ambition,” he said. “They say more about our own goals as parents and less about our children’s.”

The agony is greater, he said, for parents who both work outside the home because they worry they are not participating enough in their child’s development.

Gift giving is meant to bond the giver to the receiver, he said, but nowadays many gifts are for solitary use.

“The whole process about giving gifts is having a good time and enjoying Christmas,” he said. “They make life worth living.

“Any toy that makes a kid happy is the right gift,” said Sutton-Smith, who has argued over whether war toys should be banned.

“I don’t care much for them,” he said, “but what I am against is people interfering in kids’ play. Little boys play-fighting is almost universal.”

Sutton-Smith favors video games because he thinks they are fun, but he doesn’t sanction excess to the detriment of such staples as homework, sleeping or eating.

He said he can imagine that in the future there may be electronic simulators, such as the World War II Link trainers, that allow children to engage in adventures without getting hurt.