Every time I happen upon one of these discussions, I flash back to #1 daughter and the Cabbage Patch Doll...
She was six when the blasted things first came out.
Grandma decided that we would get her one for Christmas and since there weren’t any to be had at any price out in our personal remote corner of Flyover Country, I got to “go pick one up” on my business trip to the East Coast the first week of December.
(...that was the closest I’d been to hand-to-hand combat in a while, but I digress.)
Anyway, I procured the doll, it got opened Christmas morning to great approval, appreciation and long years of play.
Then it got passed down to #1 GRAND daughter and I spent a part of a weekend watching her playing with her two younger brothers.
That old Cabbage Patch doll was there, along with a pile of assorted other toys, a few sticks, marbles and a kid-sized cardboard box.
I’d give you a list of the things all of those items got morphed into by that busy little trio over the next half hour, but I’d run out of bandwidth and only get ten percent of the gigs that Cabbage Patch alone got.
Kids’ psyches are shaped by the toys they get???
That’s gotta set some kind of record for mental paralysis by over-analysis (aka somebody’s Doctoral thesis).
Kids play with anything they can lay a hand to and the only limit on the play is the imagination of the child.
I have to wonder if some of these so-called experts on children have children of their own or, for that matter, actually had a childhood.
Kids’ psyches are shaped by the toys they get???
That’s gotta set some kind of record for mental paralysis by over-analysis (aka somebody’s Doctoral thesis).
Kids play with anything they can lay a hand to and the only limit on the play is the imagination of the child.
I have to wonder if some of these so-called experts on children have children of their own or, for that matter, actually had a childhood.
I am certain that it happened with all of them but it really stands out with my one nephew. First every branch, twig, or Popsicle stick morphed into a sword or knife, then it was a gun. When he discovered Star Trek it was a phaser. He could turn a pile of blankets and two dining room chairs into a fort in 3 minutes flat. He and I would would take a walk down by the stream and the next thing you knew we were on the look out for storm troopers or wild Indians (Don't know how he got both those groups together, but he was only 7).
To date he has never assaulted anyone, robbed a liquor store or beat up either grandmother.
He has turned out to be one heck of a swimmer, and soccer player and earns money as a lifeguard and a soccer ref.