When a child receives a new toy, several things can happen: ignore it, pay attention to it, open it and play with it, or open it and play with the box.
The latter, which often happens, shows us that the important thing for children is not always the object of play, but to play, without more. We believe adults who need sophisticated toys to have fun and the reality is that the more sophisticated, the less they like them.
Yesterday my son Jon gave me one more sample of it. Walking along the beach (well, running along the shore ... who loves to go from one place to another along the coast) began to stop every time he found a stone. He bent down, picked it up and threw it into the sea smiling at the sound of "plop" of the stone falling into the water and "plop" of his father emulating the water. Thus was born the game of throwing the stones "plop-plop". For about twenty minutes he devoted himself to bending down, taking one or two stones and throwing them into the sea. I sat, a little retired, to observe him.
In those twenty minutes he taught me how little it takes for a three-year-old to entertain and have fun and how much he can learn from something as simple as throwing stones in the water.
Crouch down and choose the stone you want to throw, touch and palpate them, select the stones from among the shells, squeeze them into the fist so that they do not fall, turn and select the water as a target, evaluate the scenario to eliminate possible unwanted victims (I loved it see how he looked first and waited for people to pass in order to throw his stones safely), throw them at once or one first and then the other, see how they fall into the water and cause a small hole and a splash later and hear the "Plop" of the small stones and the "ploff" of the large stones.
Oh, the children. They have so much to teach us ... I, for now, have already learned a lesson: Some toys bought that I thought you would love have become a simple dust warehouse whose sole purpose is to wait for a duster to eliminate that function.
Curiously, these toys are those that allow less research and cause less creativity. In other words, they are the toys that practically play alone.
