But yeah, my nephew is 12 months old. My parents told me not to get the awesome toy for him. Now I know what you're thinking--they have age indicators on the boxes! The toy is for 1.5 to 4 year-old children, so obviously he couldn't have played with that. Pick a toy in his age range! But what I'm thinking is, he's going to be that age someday anyway! Why not get him a sustainable toy that he can enjoy for years to come rather than something that he'll grow out of immediately?
But apparently everyone else doesn't think that way--at least when it comes to babies. Never mind that they grow really quickly, just get them something for their age that they can't even understand at their current age, or even remember liking when they grow older. Case in point: at the back of Toys R Us were these CAT trucks of varying sizes. Exactly the same design but in different sizes. My parents told me to get the tiny one because my nephew was tiny, too. I'm going like, (in my head of course) "I wanna get the big one so he can enjoy it until he's 7!"
Let's imagine both scenarios here.
Scenario A: I get him what I want, the big Fisher Price truck.
Useful life: a good 5-6 years more.
Enjoyment: 4 stars. Being a one year old, he can sit on it and get rolled around. Pretty fun stuff. Now, as he gets older he gets more fun out of its features. You see, his dad owns beachfront property so he could not only ride the truck through the sand like a boss, but since the truck is big enough he can actually dig up sand using the shovel thing!
Scenario B: I get him the tiny truck.
Useful life: already pushing it with 3 years.
Enjoyment: ??? because he's a 1-year old. He likes anything colorful that moves. When he gets older he'll always just have this tiny, decorative truck that he doesn't even remember playing with.
I'm no expert in infant psychology myself, but I think that's a pretty well-reasoned argument. But my well- reasoned argument came to no use anyway because we ended up getting him a Little Tikes Play 'n Scoot Pirate Ship which is an even more awesome toy, but the point is that it was also for non-one-year-olds! So basically I got what I wanted but not the toy I wanted to give. My ego is forcing me to say: I thought of getting the nice pirate toy, too, but it wasn't a truck so the subject was moot.
While going through this toy shopping craze, I was getting a funny feeling. We were at the Little Tikes section of Toys R Us, near those playhouses and I was imagining kids laughing and playing, opening the doors and jumping out from behind the windows. The pictures of kids on the boxes doing exactly that did nothing to stop my imagination. I told myself that someday, I'm going to buy all of these cool toys and put them in a room dedicated entirely to my kids' enjoyment and fun-learning, a playroom basically.
I must say, thinking about kids is really something. You get all warm and cozy on the inside. A huge, unstoppable smile creeps over your face. You feel light, and all the stress just flies out of your brain and get replaces by images of a happy family laughing and hugging while having a picnic. I don't want to blame my being a female for these occasional thoughts. I'm pretty sure guys think about this stuff, too.
For the rest of the day, I couldn't help but be exposed to thoughts of kids because my mom and I looked for my niece's gift, a pair of ballet flats. My niece just loves anything pink or purple but fashion dictated I get her the ruby ones. In the process of locating those tiny shoes we saw other tiny things (okay, maybe not so tiny, she is turning three after all) like dresses and skirts. Now, if you know me at all you'd know that dresses and skirts are not my thing. I'm a jeans and shirt kind of girl. But when you think of children, girls especially, you automatically dress them up in cutesy clothes because they're pretty and girly.
SPEAKING OF GIRLY
While I was at Toys R Us, I felt incredibly insulted by the fact that they labeled their toys by gender. I wanted to go over to the Gundam toys but I was still very conscious of the fact that the term 'Boys' Toys' was glaring at me. Okay, so maybe it wasn't labeled that way but the fact is they grouped toys according to gender.
Honestly, I don't see anything wrong with liking toys that come from "that side" of Toys R Us. Gundam was a TV show I watched as a kid, naturally I'd be attracted to the awesome toys that brought my imagination to life, wouldn't I? And as for Gundam being a show for boys--what, so you're saying robots are exclusive to boys? I won't go so feminist as to accuse society of thinking women aren't capable engineers of giant anthropomorphic Japanese killing machines but you get my point, right?
It's like philosophy. It's like David Foster Wallace's "This is Water". The more you look into gender stratifications, the more you see how pointless it is.
Perhaps the only time parents ought to be concerned about the toys their children are playing with is when they don't help their children's cognitive development or, at the very least, their happiness. But hold on, let's think about that--there are absolutely no such toys! The mere fact that they are toys eliminates any possibility of ruining of your children! So if your boy plays with a Barbie, or your girl is laying waste to Hoth with a Lego AT-AT you shouldn't be concerned. And if I want to go check out a Gundam, I shouldn't have to be concerned!
While gender neutral talks could span more topics outside children's toys, I must end my musings here. This week was a hell of a week I hope to forget, and writing about things that seem totally obvious but startlingly obscure feels really good.
I'll update soon.
