When I was a little girl, Christmas was the most magical time of the year. Anything was possible, every dream could come true. My nights were filled with visions of new dolls and new toy ovens and new gadgets and gewgaws that would somehow transform my dreary little life into something spectacular.
I was startled recently by seeing a commercial that brought me right back to my childhood. It showed several children "playing" plastic instruments, looking like they were having the time of their lives. Britney Spears on stage doesn't have any more fun than this cabal of little tykes playing their plastic for all they were worth. I saw those toys through adult eyes, and the cynic in me snickered as I contemplated what those toys probably really look like, to say nothing of how they probably sound. But I know for the children that may have been watching, those little pieces of colorful plastic represented unlimited dreams, opportunity, the future.
It is good to have dreams. Without them, children would have no goals to shoot for, no reason to advance, to learn, to grow up. They would never move out, and their parents would be stuck with them forever. Since I have two of those people in residence myself, no one is more motivated than I am to incentivize them to pursue the possibilities that present themselves.
But I have to wonder just how much of an incentive it is when we present our kids with toys that do everything for them? If they already play the music, why learn to play the piano? If they already spin, or toss, or fill in their own blanks, why bother to learn and grow and change and pursue a dream?
When I was a little girl, toys were rudimentary, at best, by comparison with today's technological wonders. It was a Big Deal when Baby First Step came out, and she could walk all by herself [batteries not included.] Dolls would wet themselves, because they had a hole in their mouth that the water went in, and a hole slightly lower where the water came out. It was a learning process, [although I will be honest, it did not prepare me for the real thing. Real babies are so wet and so loud. Who knew?]
I think it is possible to do too much for your children - to give them too much, to allow them too little room to expand their own minds. Our children are so regimented, so busy, so structured, that I often wonder when they have time to think, to dream things up, to invent, to just simply Be.
I grew up on a farm in the middle of rural Minnesota. We were poor, I will admit, and my mother was a born money manager. She is capable of great things, where a little money is concerned, and she can make a little go a very, very long ways. Of course, she didn't have much choice, so that was a helpful imperative, I'm sure. I knew that I didn't have as much as some of the kids around me, but I was never deprived, and in many ways, I had a wealth that cannot be bought.
I had the luxury of time. I played every day, and our play, when I had neighbors around to play with, or my play, when I didn't, was creative and full of imagination. I had to invent most of what I did, because there weren't any interactive games to tell me what to do, and I wasn't hampered by plastic toys that could only be used for one thing. We made do with our imaginations, and thus, I didn't realize that I was doing without. I had the entire world at my fingertips at any moment, and whatever I didn't have, I dreamed up.
Among my favorite games was FBI, where I was the intrepid agent tracking down the bad guys and hauling them off to jail in my playhouse. We had a couple of old cars sitting around that we would sit in and pretend to drive, and we watched our imaginary quarry from our hidden vantage point with every bit as much attentiveness as any real agent ever has.
The most interesting part, in looking back, is that even when there were several of us, we all seemed to imagine the same elements in our games, even though none of it was real. Do children today ever have that opportunity to have a meeting of the minds, a childish detente with an imaginary foe, that always ended with the good guys [that would be us] winning the day?
When I had to clean my room, I would play retail store, to try to make the task less odious. I have never been too big on cleaning, it's not the fun part of life for me. So to make it a little more interesting, I would make up games while cleaning my room, something my mother forced upon me only rarely, but always in great exasperation when it happened. Thus, when she was pushed to the limit, I would be under pressure to make the room somewhat less of a hazardous waste zone, leading to the amusing activity of retail clerk. [A game my own daughter now plays for real, and she will be happy to share with you that it is not as much fun as you might think.]
I would pick up piles of clothes, with no clue if they were clean or dirty, of course, and would then start to sort them. I would pretend that I was working in a retail store, which at the time seemed like a dream job - sort of like getting paid to shop, right? [Erin is now snickering at me, just at the thought of it.]
I would fold and hang and sort, all the while pretending that I was working instead of being punished for my sloth-like behavior. Eventually, I would forget the point, and would start to get interested in the clothes themselves, and would try them on and start to model them and dream up other outfits that would go together in a new and stylish look, rarely, if ever, actually making headway without some intervention on the part of my increasingly annoyed parent. Sounds silly to the kids of today, I'm sure, but it was entertaining for me, and it helped me to make an unexciting task go more quickly.
I was never bored as a child. This sort of admission was sure to result in work being assigned instantly, since idle hands are the devil's playground, and my mother is way too sincere a Christian to allow the devil any loitering time in her space. I learned early never to admit that I didn't have something going on that needed tending to, because the work she assigned was never a discouragement to boredom. Much better to pick your evil, I always say.
If I had nothing else to do, and there was no imaginary game enticing me, I read a book. It seems that children barely read any more, they are always hooked into their i-Pod or their video game or their portable DVD or the computer. But there is something about a book that cannot be replaced - it is concrete and tangible, and it allows us to experience the story in a whole different way.
I have never seen the Chronicles of Narnia, nor have I seen the Tolkien rings series. I read the books, several times over, and studied them in college. I do not want to ruin the picture in my mind of each character, each location, each facet of the story, by having it sullied by someone else's vision. A good book conjures up pictures in the mind, and the story plays out for real in your own imagination. There is no real picture that can compare to my vision of Middle Earth. When I was reading, I was living it, and it is the only reality I need. You cannot get that visceral experience from Cliff's Notes, nor can you experience it from a DVD.
Sometimes I walk down the toy aisle of Target or WalMart, and I breathe deeply and smell the plastic baby dolls, the Barbie dolls, the crayons, and I am transported instantly back to childhood, when each of those things presented me with endless opportunities, vistas to conquer, whole scenarios to create in my mind. It takes only a whiff of the new plastic, or the waxy crayon box, to remind me of days gone by, and dreams left off in mid-story.
I wonder, when Santa unloads his sleigh under the tree in the houses of today, what dreams will those children remember when they are middle aged? Will a crayon still smell as sweet? Or will they be middle aged rock band gurus, still waiting for their music to play? I say, save the children - buy a coloring book, and let them dream.
