The little collectors

I got back from a long meet-extended-family-for-the-festive-season, only to be besieged by a variety of weird health glitches. Now that all is better, I wanted to blog about a common problem raised by a number of parents we met over the course of our trip.

It seemed like there were two types in all – us, and the others. Pretty much all of the parents we met seem stuck at the same place we were at a few years ago. They all have little collectors for kids. Here is a little insight.

Kids are conservative by nature. Look at how they ask the same question over and over again, or wear the same dress everyday, or generally show a touching loyalty to the same cartoon or the same film. Creativity comes when you expose them in unfamiliar situations. Kids – even teenagers – feel the need to conform – to each other's standards. And in today's world, everyone's standards are standardised by the global media.

Toy manufacturers tap this side of child nature to turn them into little collectors. They give them different versions the same toys. Or the same costumes. Or the same books. Which is how the manufacturers of Barbie, or the Mattel Cars or the Ben 10 or Beyblade merchandise made their millions.

Every home we visited had pretty much identical toys, identical comics, and identical clothes. And none of the kids seemed to play anything. They'd all turned into collectors. Several Barbie dolls or several cars were just displayed or thrown higgledy-piggledy into toyboxes.

When I gifted Ken his first toy car, or his second or even his third, I had no idea what monster I was creating here. All said and done, these toys are irresistible. Till he was around 4, he would have about a 100 Matchbox and Mattel cars at any given point in time.

The mate finally put an end to the madness and brought some proportion into the toy-box. And I've de-addicted myself and with great effort enforced a ban on collectibles. We replaced the cars with board games. 

Honestly, our popularity levels as parents went drastically down and games are much more of an effort than collectibles. While he would happily bang the cars together simulating gory accidents, he needs me to sit with him for Ludo or Carom, since little K is too small to do anything more than run away with the coins. On busy days, I am tempted to take out the collection of cars and just give it to him. 

Five years later, he still has the withdrawal symptoms from the car phase. We can't visit anyone's place without him rummaging their child's car box. Almost everyone seems to have one. Most of our friends think it's cruel to do this, making the resolution harder to stick with. 

On the upside, however, I feel superior when other parents' narrate the tragic tales of thousands spent on Beyblade merchandise, only to be broken 5 days later in a simulated war between the neighbourhood kids.

Thanks to this insight, Kaavya has a really small toybox and a wider variety of toys. Nothing is battery operated, no action figures and no collectible toy. It is such a pleasure to see her actually play – the way kids used to once upon a time. She doesn't need a Princess Costume to be a princess; any shawl will do. 

I give her a set of my own kitchen bowls to rattle around together. The big bowl serves as the little bowl's Mama and talk to each other as she becomes a ventriloquist. Alternatively, both when it is not being used to cook a big imaginary meal. She goes shopping with a plastic cover in her little tricycle and comes back with imaginary veggies and keeps house in her toy tent.

The same tricycle becomes a racing bike as she races around the house and a train when she ties it to her old wooden walker with a string. She has a few puzzles and we give her alternate sets, (putting away the other set) every few days, so the novelty remains. And we don't buy cartoon/movie merchandise.

We have an upper limit on the number of things any one of us own at any point in time – including clothes and excluding books. When we bring something in, we usually balance by giving something away. Most of the limits are negotiable (though the kids don't know that) and we try hard to stick with them.

It needs a little conscious effort to say No. And say No consistently. Kids are persistent. And God, they nag. I refuse to listen to comparisons and when I am attacked with the old “You don't love me,” I ignore it. We both know it's an old line and the kids know I love them.

If – like most of the parents we met – you are truly worried that your kid just seems to build up a collection of toys that he only breaks and doesn't really play with, perhaps you could try our new and radical method of parenting.