Your Child: Today and Tomorrow / Some Problems for Parents Concerning Punishment, Reasoning, Lies, Ideals and Ambitions, Fear, Work and Play, Imagination, Social Activities, Obedience, Adolescence, Will, Heredity

by Sidonie Matsner Gruenberg

There are numberless things that will go to make up the little girl's doll house, and her activities can be extended over the entire period during which she cares to play with dolls. At first she will be satisfied with handling her baby and putting her to sleep. Later she will want to dress and undress it. Before long she will have a whole family of dolls and will want to prepare their meals for them, sew and wash their clothes, and keep the house in order. These growing needs on her part are just as real as the needs adults feel, and it would be just as unwise to get her a new doll, when she needs most of all a wash-boiler for her kitchen, as it would be to buy for yourself a picture, when you really need a pair of new spectacles.

All the different articles needed for the running of the doll's house can now be bought separately. In buying the different articles, the things to keep in mind are usability, simplicity, and durability. The furniture that you buy or make must be able to serve the ostensible purpose of doll's furniture. It is better to get one chair that is of the right size for the doll, well proportioned and strong enough to stand the handling of the owner, than a whole set of "pretty" and flimsy and useless furniture that you can buy in a gay box for the same price.

Of course, it is understood that the principles of usability, simplicity, and durability apply to the dolls themselves. It is now easy to obtain dolls with indestructible heads and with jointed bodies made of durable material. The little baby will love the doll with a felt head. It can stand being loved hard without losing some of its features. To give a little girl a doll that is so finely dressed and so daintily constructed that she is permitted to come out of her box only on state occasions is a violation of every sound principle of child training and fair dealing.

I have mentioned, as examples of the kind of toys that can be bought singly and grouped about some central idea, the farm and the doll's house, but, of course, there are many other things—railroads with their equipment, dairies, stores of all kinds, etc.

Besides the toys that are related to various lines of activity, each child, as soon as he is old enough, wants the opportunity to work with materials and tools. The youngest children can have beads to string, mosaic blocks with which patterns can be made, etc. For the older children you can get materials for sewing, painting, parquetry work, and the like. There are boxes containing wooden and iron construction strips out of which bridges, houses, airships, and all sorts of exciting things can be made.

For the growing boy nothing is more appropriate than some carpentry tools of his own. Here again we must remember that it is better to buy a few good tools and gradually build up an equipment than to buy a set that looks well enough in the store, but goes to pieces under real usage.

A printing-press or well-constructed toy typewriter, a camera or scroll saw, will afford hours of helpful amusement and instruction.

Musical instruments are always acceptable. The metalophone is one of the simplest from which you can get real music. The cheapest is just as usable as the more expensive, although, of course, it does not have so wide a range of notes.

It is impossible to enumerate all the indoor group games that are offered, but in selecting a game you must make sure that it really has some sense in it, and that it does not stimulate the gambling spirit, as do so many of the games with dice or a spinning wheel as a part of the equipment.

All toys that encourage healthy outdoor sports are worth while. A great deal of the progress in toy-making has been along mechanical lines, until we are confronted with the most intricate mechanical contrivances. They are interesting at an exhibition, and most likely the child will be attracted by them and will want them, but only to look at and own. He will tire of them much more quickly than he would of the simple, usable toy. In this respect the children of the rich are to be pitied. They are overloaded with these expensive, mechanical toys which overstimulate them at first and later bore them. The educative value of simple games with sticks and stones, or anything the child may happen to pick up, is far greater and calls for more exercise of imagination and ingenuity and the other qualities we desire to foster than is that of the elaborate mechanical toys.