Do NOT Waste Your Money on Toys this Year!
By: Marci Lentnek Klein M.D.
Tags: Creativity, Parenting, Education, Education Reform, Parenting Advice

Do NOT Waste Your Money on Toys this Year!

photo credit: Nick Fewings Unsplash

Holidays are coming, and it’s shaping up to be a very long winter, one that may feel like the longest on record! Because of the pandemic, we may be spending a lot more time at home as more schools are forced to transition to remote learning. You might think this is the perfect time to stock up on toys that will keep kids busy.

Forget it! Save your money.

There’s a better solution. My advice is based on 25 years of experience as a clinical and academic pediatrician and 21 more years as a parent. But don’t just trust me. The American Academy of Pediatrics agrees; they say the best gift for your kid may be a box.

Why choose a simple, boring brown box over that shiny new toy with bright colors, flashing lights, and moving parts? Over the last century, modern manufacturing and global trade have changed the toy market forever, which is now over a 20 billion dollar industry. Have you ever been to Toy Fair?

Every year, new toys hit the market. Competition and the race for the next trendy gizmo drives new products to become increasingly complex and specialized. As a result, many toys have become more limited in function, each with a complex set of instructions and a single way to play. That’s great for teaching kids how to follow the rules but fails to foster creativity or truly inspire children to think outside the box. In my experience, teaching kids to follow a single set of rules to create a single acceptable outcome is very well accomplished by our modern educational system (that’s another article) and has no place in playtime. The beauty and value of play are lost when a toy comes with instructions. Play is about expanding creativity rather than limiting it.

For instance, take the world’s most iconic toy, Lego. The original kit was literally a set of blocks that snap together. In 1949, Lego had one set, described as Binding Bricks. Now Lego has no less than 17,000 unique sets. We now need to buy tens of kits to create a city and follow hundreds of pages of instructions, only to wind up with an identical city to the next door neighbor’s. And if your kids are anything like mine, once a Lego kit is assembled, Lord help the parent who tries to take it apart to extend the playtime. In truth, the best way to play with Lego is to toss them in a box and hide the instructions.

Toy companies are not the only ones to blame; the modern education system contributes to creativity loss. This generation of parents has been trained to believe that there is a right and wrong way to do things, focusing on standardized tests and conformity in answers. We are tricked into believing that the best toys should come with a gazillion parts, a complex and detailed set of rules, a single way to do it right, and a healthy dose of anxiety and frustration. So how does the cardboard box fix this problem?

Cardboard fosters endless creativity. For starters, shipping boxes don’t come with rules. Unlike toys, they don’t even come with parts; a child is not told what that box should become. It’s up to the child’s own imagination. They need to create the toy they want to play with. A box can become a kid-sized medieval fort or castle, teleportation devises from the future, a theatre for the next 3-hour performance you will happily sit through, or it may become a spaceship that will bring the family on a trip to Mars.

photo by 3DuxDesign

2. Supports self-esteem. With open-ended materials like cardboard and no wrong way to play, every child has the opportunity to feel the pride that comes with success; something that, as a pediatrician, I feel is severely deficient in modern society and is in part to blame for the massive number of kids currently on anxiety medications in the USA.

3. Builds 3D spatial thinking and STEM skills. Constructing an entire city or prototyping the next modern invention with cardboard requires many skills, including fine motor, 3D conceptualization, basic geometry, and engineering concepts.

4. Saves the Planet. Perhaps one of the greatest values of using the cardboard box as a toy is the environmental benefit. With over 26 million tons of plastic going into landfills every year, it is easy to appreciate that we don’t need more shiny plastic toys, particularly those with limited use with a short life span. Why not give a cardboard box, already made with recycled materials, a second life?

5. Saves space. The cardboard box allows parents to reclaim their formal living room. Just flatten and store projects when needed. And over-used, retired projects can always head right back into the recycling bin.

Two kids take cardboard construction to the next level.

Admittedly, not every child can instantly see hours of creativity when they look at a box. Nor can many adults. The 3DuxDesign Modeling System is a line of products designed by teenage siblings who saw the simple cardboard box's unique value but recalled the limitations of using duct tape. The two siblings teamed up to create a series of beautifully simple yet elegant reusable cardboard connectors. The 3Dux modeling system allows children to use a cardboard box to design, build, and recreate anything they can imagine. Reusable, the system allows parents to easily dismantle giant forts, reclaim their living room, and kids to recreate new structures for hours of endless creative play.

photo by 3DuxDesign

Learn more about 3dux design’s story and how Ayana and Ethan Klein are determined to bring creativity back to early childhood, one Amazon box at a time. https://www.3duxdesign.com/pages/about-the-designers

Take it to the Classroom

If fun and games aren’t all parents want for their kids and cardboard, check out some live virtual architecture and engineering classes to take cardboard construction to the next level.

Sure, we all love to see our children’s eyes light up when they open those gifts and pull out that beautiful shiny new toy. Don’t be so quick to toss the box it came in!