The Hindu Business Line : Child's play

Ever sat down to tea at your daughter's doll's house party, or helped your child with a jig-saw puzzle? If you haven't, you should do it right away, says Apollo Hospital's neuro-psychologist.

Little Reynard rushes up to his mother with a generous invitation. "You want to drive my truck?" he asks in two-year-old babble. Without waiting for a reply, he makes off in great haste on chubby legs, to fetch the sturdy `army' truck, and eagerly demonstrates the technicalities of driving before letting her behind the wheel. "See, how you open the door," he squeals excitedly. "And here," he says pointing to the vehicle's roomy boot, "you put your handbag."

Mom's purse balances precariously on the edge of the boot. The explanations continue through a series of jubilant squeals and bursts of authoritarian impatience. Mother tries in vain to keep pace with his active two-year-old imagination, which suddenly shifts gears from driving instructor to coach passenger. She might have been a sore failure at grasping the nitty-gritties of driving, but Reynard was doing a lot of learning. And his mentor — the toy truck.

In an interview with Life, Dr Sabiha Sultana, Clinical Neuropsychologist, drew attention to precisely this point — how toys are integral to the overall development of a child. "Right from the time of its birth, a child is attracted to so many things outside; it reaches out to anything that it can lay its hands on like the rattle toy." Now who can forget the raspy jingle that filled our infant ears each time we threatened the grown-ups with a fearsome bawl?

"Such toys are very useful to infants for two reasons. One, to check out the sensory aspect and whether the child's hearing ability is alright; and the other to help the child focus its attention on something. So at every level and at every stage, toys are very important to a child's development," says the neuro-psychologist who counsels patients at the Apollo Hospital in Chennai. Sabiha was recently put on the consulting panel of Funskool India where she advises the company on toys for different age groups.

How exactly are toys related to a child's growth progress? "A child goes through various stages of psycho development. For a very young child the rattling type of toys or something that a child can hold onto is ideal. As the child grows older, he graduates to toys that are designed to enhance walking. At the age of three or four, the child begins to enter the explorative stage and, at that time, he likes to interact with a lot of toys like building blocks," she explains.

So while Reynard was avidly engaged in initiating his grown-up student in the ABCs of driving, his mind was a hive of development in progress. There were ideas taking shape, new discoveries being made (accomplishing the tricky task of opening a stubborn truck door is quite an achievement for a toddler) and a whole new world that beckoned to his childish curiosity.

The other area where toys and growth go hand-in-hand is corporative development, says Sabiha. For instance, who would have even guessed that when as children we built those imposing structures with our building blocks, we were sharpening our visu-spacial and visu-constructive skills? "When a child is constructing a building out of the blocks or making an automobile, for instance, he is indirectly refining these skills, and the part of the brain that is concerned with this is being stimulated and activated and, more importantly, being developed. As a child grows, a lot of concept formation is taking place, because the child learns to identify shapes, colours and numbers, all of which refines a lot of creative skills in the child. And creativity means a lot of development of the brain."

Take, for example, board games. You really wouldn't have attached the profound precepts of "goal strategising" or "concept planning" to your moves when, for instance, you shot all those carom coins into their pockets or checkmated your opponent or "killed" off all of partner's reds at a game of Ludo. But, says Sabiha, "Board games involve a lot of strategising, goal directed behaviour and planning that is again attributed to the reasoning skills of the game. So indirectly, the child is being encouraged to use his brain. There is also quite a bit of development of social skills because while a child is playing, the concepts of participation, cooperation, sharing... all these develop alongside as do leadership skills self-esteem."

At a further level there is also a gender identity "that is established when interacting with a particular toy. For instance, girls have been found to identify with a specific set of toys different from boys." Remember your brother's annoying vroom as he drove his imaginary bus, just when you were tucking your doll into bed?

But how may parents today actually devote so much of time and thought to buying a toy for their child?

Sabiha says that we have moved up from the days of just routine buying to abate those bawling hysterics. Parents are a lot more aware and their purchase is driven by judicious thinking, she says. "They like to pick up a toy which has educative value, entertainment value, and something that will contribute to the learning and development of a child."

Of course, today there is a huge onslaught of imported toys that flood the market, which are preferred because of their low cost and visual appeal. And though the younger generation of parents show a lot of awareness in buying toys for their children, there is a certain category that buys expensive toys for two reasons; one it's a prestige issue and two, it's the age-old complaint of little or no time to spend with the children. "These parents think that buying expensive toys compensates for the lack of time that they spend with their child."

But wouldn't that be a justifiable excuse given today's hectic lifestyle with both parents pursuing demanding careers?

"It's not a question of affording, I think we have to create that kind of time," is Sabiha's succinct reply. And that's only a fair trade considering that "we expect a lot from our children — they should be well-behaved and creative; we are madly putting them into various summer camps and other extra curricular activities. But if we as parents create that kind of time to spend with our children then we don't have to spend unnecessarily on summer camps where we distance our children away from us even more," she says.

Ever sat down to tea at your daughter's doll's house party, or helped your child with a jig-saw puzzle?

If you haven't, listen to what this neuro-psychologist has to say: "Toys bring the family together and contributes a lot to value building, especially when parents participate. Secondly, the quality time that the parents spend with the children is going to be that much more valuable, because when they engage in their child's recreation they are also participating in his/her education." So next time around you receive an invitation to that Barbie tea party or get the opportunity to be the supervising architect during a construction of a Lego tower, don't hesitate.

Picture by Parth Sanyal

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