How I learned to tolerate children’s toys

I wrote this as a guest post for The Big Toy Book last February and I like it so much I’m republishing it here. I can do that since I didn’t sign anything and I received a meager acknowledgment from them for writing it. It’s one of my favorites. Enjoy!

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Allow me to introduce myself; I am a mother of two with another one on the way. My son is 5 years old and my daughter is 18 months old. When my son was a baby, we lived in a small condo in Orange County, California. Not having any real experience with children or babies and being a first time mom, I wasn’t used to the bright colors, loud noises and general obnoxiousness of children and their toys. While I was pregnant with my son I imagined a sweet, quiet baby that was surrounded by plush, soft and neutral colored stuffed animals. I daydreamed that the days filled with a baby would go by smoothly and the baby would entertain himself with his own fingers and toes, never make a mess and never fuss. Before he was born the condo was always clean and organized and everything had a place.

Of course, when he was born, he was none of those things. All of a sudden here’s this loud, pink, screaming baby that obviously needed more entertainment than his own toes. Having virtually no child raising experience and a complete lack of knowledge of what to do with this screaming pink baby, my husband and I promptly went to the nearest store and bought a plethora of loud, colorful (and obnoxious) toys to entertain him. We surrounded him by things that made music, twinkled lights and danced at command. The problem was however, that although he needed the colorful stimulation (or so we thought) I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t handle the music that the toys made or the floor being covered with colorful toys, like landmines. I wanted to run and hide. My unconscious decision at the time was to put those toys away and never bring them out. So, my son grew up never really playing with colorful, loud toys. He played with things around the house like pots and pans, boxes and blocks. Even to this day, he doesn’t play with noisy, loud, colorful toys. He loves playing with wooden blocks, Legos and other building things or sometimes even a piece of string (no, I’m not kidding-he could entertain himself for hours in the backyard with a long piece of string).

Four years later when my daughter was about at the age to play with toys I had grown somewhat tolerant of loud, noisy toys thanks to countless play dates at friends’ houses and many trips to the toy store. I dusted off my son’s old colorful, noisy toys for her to play with. Although she has all of the loud, noisy toys at her disposal (they are no longer hidden) she surprisingly, loves playing with make believe toys like the play kitchen and play food. In all honesty, thank goodness and hopefully the baby in my belly won’t like loud, obnoxious toys either.