A common struggle my clients share with me is that their kids aren’t playing with the toys they have - either not enough (they get bored quickly), not well (jumping from thing to thing, leaving behind a trail of half-explored possibilities or half-achieved work), or not at all. They might be asking for new toys constantly, and yet playing with them only once or twice after they have them. This is actually so common and so simple that I figured writing a blog post about it was in order! If you’re noticing this in your child, go through this list and see if you identify what cause(s) might be at play - pun intended 😛. Let’s get right into it:
1. Your child has too many toys
That’s right - all the money and love you have poured into making sure your child has plenty of fun objects to play with, out of the kindness in your heart and joy in seeing them happy, might actually be creating the opposite effect to what you’d hoped. It sucks. Perhaps you thought your child wasn’t playing because they didn’t have enough toys, but I’m here to tell you that’s VERY RARELY the case. In fact, being bored and having only a few options to choose from tends to encourage very creative and resourceful play - who doesn’t have great memories playing in the forest with a stick? or turning a cardboard box into a spaceship?
The truth is, when children have too much available to them, and especially when all of those options are visible and all in the same space, crammed together into cabinets, bins, nooks and crannies, it’s extremely hard to go deep into play. Every other option pulls their attention as they start on something, and the sheer overwhelm of it all makes play seem like more of a chore than something enjoyable.
The solution here is easy, although it can feel daunting. Declutter your child’s space: figure out what to throw away (broken toys, ones with missing pieces, ones frankly nobody in the house likes), what to sell or donate, what to store (maybe some baby toys for an impending younger sibling? or a game they’ve been gifted which they can’t quite enjoy yet?) and what to actually display in an accessible way. A good rule of thumb: consider your child’s age in months, and don’t go over that number of play-objects. Use your judgement here: building blocks don’t have to be counted individually, but you can leave less of them out, instead of the entire box.
2. Your child’s toys are way too simple for them
Might you be underestimating your child? It’s easy to leave behind old favorites, because they loved them soooo much and maybe we are attached, or maybe just because you haven’t figured out a good way to store and swap out toys so they’ve been left there as a default. Or maybe you haven’t been playing as close attention as you’d wish to your child’s development and didn’t realize they were actually way beyond the simple shape puzzles they were doing months ago, and have been ready for a new challenge for a while. This is not so much of a problem with open-ended toys like construction pieces, loose parts, or craft tools, but close-ended toys (meaning: toys that are meant for one way of playing) quickly become obsolete in the face of a young child’s rapid development, and get extremely boring and unattractive.
As with the previous category, the way to fix this is to get rid of the too-easy toys and to pay attention to the things your child is interested in doing, the skills they’re working on, and the objects they’re gravitating to. Then you might invest some money into quality, long-lasting toys that offer them more of a challenge (while being mindful not to buy too much - see point #1!)
3. Your child’s toys are too complex for them
This is a common one. Just as we might keep toys that are way too simple for a growing child, it’s easy to offer things that are nowhere near what they can currently do. Sometimes we’re just so eager to help them advance that we end up pushing them too hard with material that is still way beyond their abilities. And while you might not be getting your 1 year old a 12-piece puzzle for their birthday, maybe relatives and friends are not so attuned to what a young toddler can do and end up offering a gift that’s better suited a bit down the line. That’s okay! Just store them away, and bring them back when you notice they’re almost ready to try them out.
Toys which present challenges that feel too hard can quickly cause frustration and dissuade a child, especially if they’re intent on doing everything themselves. And just like toys which are too simple, they add to an overwhelming landscape of barely-usable objects which obfuscate the really interesting options which are available to them and would offer hours of concentration, creativity and fun.
4. Your child’s play area is the main storage area
So this kind of goes hand-in-hard with the decluttering idea (less toys = less to store overall), but a big part of creating an environment that is conducive to play is to not confuse display with storage, and this is a trap most modern parents fall into. Here’s how it usually goes: new parents start buying or receiving toys and keeping them all in one place, maybe on the baby’s playmat. After all, there’s only a few of them. Soon after though, the once-small pile turns into several bins, and you find yourself stuffing toys, random puzzle pieces and books into a small crowd of toy bins in the corner of the room as your toddler dumps them out for the fifth time. As your kid grows, and maybe you add one or two more to the family, you’re convinced what you need is more storage, more drawers, more bins. Yet all that the kids seem to do is pull everything out, throw the 350+ animal figurines on the ground, make snow angels in them and move on to something else.
While decluttering solves part of this problem, another big part is that we tend to design and organize toy / play spaces while thinking like an adult and not like a small child. When a young kid has thousands of objects available, they can’t simply disregard the bins and drawers they’re not interested in, and carefully procure what they want from a specific location - even if they’re well organized, even professionally so. No, they will pay attention to EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ALL AT ONCE. This is why you have to separate storage and display. Storage should be closed, maybe even locked, unaccessible and out of sight. It could be a locked cabinet in the living room or big bins in the attic. It should function for you as the adult, so you can put away things that are too easy or too difficult, and swap out toys every once in a while.
While I’m on this topic, I should mention the oh-so-famous toy rotations. They’ve become popular in social media over the last years, and have led parents to believe they should swap out a child’s entire toy collection every two weeks or so. Well, not only is this a lot of work for the adult, in can also be quite disorienting to a child. Besides, the excitement from “new” toys will be short-lived, and soon enough your kids will be asking for rotations when they’re bored. My suggestion: swap out one or two things, once in a while, when you notice they haven’t been touched in a long time, but don’t pressure yourself into doing these big overhauls - it’s just a trend.
5. Your child’s toys are not presented in an inviting way
The display part is what should be designed and work for your child - meaning limited options that won’t overwhelm them, that aren’t waaay too easy or waaay too hard, and that are displayed in an inviting, orderly way. A toy box hides many things in the bottom, is often cluttered and messy, and children quickly forget what they can’t see, or resort to dumping everything out.
In Montessori classrooms and Montessori homes, this is often solved via low, open shelves where a small selection of toys is displayed for the kids to access, use and put away on their own. The reason that shelves work so much better as a display for toys is that kids can see everything they have, they know everything has a specific place, and they learn to return it to it. These shelves should be kept pretty sparse, with empty space between the toys, without cramming them together or stacking things to fit more in there. Here are a few examples of Montessori-style shelves for toys, books and other educational materials, from around the internet:
One thing you’ll also notice is that these objects are presented in a way that invites a child to use them. Instead of keeping a game in its box, you can put all the pieces in a tray. Instead of just setting a wooden puzzle down for a toddler, you can leave it “undone” - with the frame and pieces separate - which compels the child to complete it (in the educational field this is often called a “provocation/invitation for play”). Instead of filling a giant tub or box with magnetic tiles, you can offer a beautiful basket with a selection of them. Order and beauty attract kids’ attention and pull them into deep play. One very simple way to do this is to go around the house finding small trays, bowls, boxes or other containers that you can use to organize and present their toys. What you choose is as important and enticing as how you present it!
6. Your child’s toys are too “active”
A common saying that holds true: “active toys make for passive children”. What this means is that when toys are too active or busy - with lights, sounds, battery-operated movement - and generally require very little interaction or effort from a a child, they turn children’s play into a passive endeavor: one of watching, listening, consuming. And this kind of play quickly becomes dull and boring, as it presents little challenge and doesn’t bring a lot of novelty or possibilities.
Limit the amount of active/busy toys and focus on things that encourage and invite your kid to work with them. Contrary to popular belief, this doesn’t mean wooden toys only: there are lots of plastic, metal, fabric or otherwise varied toys which let children engage in active play and involve many parts of their bodies and minds. Some examples are puzzles, building blocks, balls, loose parts, pretend-play elements (people, animals, a dollhouse, costumes), gross motor equipment, games and craft supplies.
7. Your child is more interested in other stuff
If you do have a small collection of beautifully-displayed, developmentally-appropriate toys and they STILL aren’t playing, ask yourself: what are they doing? You might notice that they’re more interested in crawling or running around, following you around, doing what you are doing - be it cooking, or cleaning the house, or going outside and exploring nature or socializing. It’s completely normal and good for a child to be fully engrossed in this kind of work, as they’re learning to be a human and how to do all of the tasks required of them in our modern society!
Kids, even really young ones, will often prefer real purposeful work to toys and go through periods where they’re not interested on anything to play with. And this is a clue that lets us know we should try to include them more, as much as possible, in our daily activities and offer them opportunities to work on building themselves and developing practical skills that will be useful all their lives. Instead of investing in more toys, consider empowering them with tools such as child-sized cooking utensils, stepstools, or other independence-enabling devices which allow them to be more effective and set them up for success.
Let this post be an encouragement to pare down your collection of toys and be more intentional about what you’re offering to your child and how, so that they can enjoy deep play and work ❤️ If you’d like close guidance and a professional look at your specific home environment, check out .
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