When I had a child, I knew it would involve having toys, but my house has become a giant toy box over the years. There are toys in every room in my house. I am not complaining because I am grateful that I can give my son whatever his heart desires. Many people would say he is spoiled, including me, at times, but I have learned that you only live once. It didn’t start that way well because babies need a lot of care toys are not the main priority.
It started as feeding into his curiosity about construction trucks and morphed into a giant toy box. If your child is showing an interest in something, it is our job to feed that curiosity. My husband felt the same way. He even went as far as tracking down the DOT guys who pave the streets so he can take my son every week to watch them work. They became regulars. My son carried his paver and dump truck with him whenever he went. They would watch them for hours, and my son would mimic what the DOT workers were doing with his toys.
Feeding into his curiosity and understanding why he wanted construction truck toys taught him how they are built and each truck’s purpose. Even at seven years old, he still plays construction in all different ways. I never realized how important these trucks’ jobs were until my son explained it to me. Creating different scenes and making them as realistic as possible.
We quickly outgrew our small two-bedroom condo by the time he was two and moved into a bigger home. I thought we would have plenty of space for the overflowing mountain of toys. We keep it organized, and everything has a place, but his interest shifted to trains, cars, and first responders as he got older. It’s not all about the toys. I have bins of books and at least four different bookshelves so he can read whenever he wants. Even though I will say the older he gets, the harder it is to get him to read just for the heck of it.
We have train tables, a ton of trains that were so graciously gifted to us, and tracks that can wrap around my living room floor to create elaborate realistic routes. I have drawers filled with pull-back cars and hot wheels for those days he feels like making a car dealership. My husband got very upset when my son sold me a Lamborghini for $2.00 LOL… The look on his face was priceless.
My House is a Giant Toy Box
On rare occasions, I do have people over. They always have a comment about how many toys my son has. That is where the inspiration for this article came from because someone made a comment. “Your House is a giant toy box” they weren’t wrong, but I had my reasons. I didn’t need a bigger house for my stuff. I needed it for my son. What is the point of having a home with lots of space so you can fill it with stuff that you admire every so often? At least my son plays with all the toys that fill my home. So it might not have started that way, but I would never change the giant toy box that I call home.
You may be wondering why we don’t get rid of some toys to help clear out the house that is now a giant toy box. That’s a great question, and I am happy to answer it. The answer is I can’t unless my son decides to donate or get rid of it will never notice if a few things are gone if he has so much. Yeah would think that, but we learned our lesson when we put some toys away that he didn’t play with for a while. Within days my son was playing with his trucks and wanted to know where his blue pickup truck was. The truck he went months without touching was suddenly a necessity to haul some toy wood lumber.
The hunt for the truck began, and I nervously looked at my mother and husband and mouthed, “where is the truck?” My mom shook her head. “I put it away,” she mouthed, exasperated because we wanted to donate some stuff. Thank goodness that the box she put it in was still in the garage because that truck was essential to his construction crew. Because you know he didn’t have three other pickup trucks that he could have used. We all got in trouble when she brought it upstairs and gave it to him. The child wanted answers as he started to look around to see what else was missing. Yup, grandma got caught and had to bring up the whole bin she wanted to donate. We learned that day that it was best to let him decide what toys stay and what toys he donates.
He made good arguments about why certain toys needed to stay because they had a vital role to play when he was playing. The time he was fo, I swear I was convinced he would be a lawyer because he had an argument for everything. The crazy thing is that most of the time, he has good points. Too many times, I see parents arguing with their kids over getting rid of toys or stuff in general. In the end, the kid usually loses the argument because you know parents. However, if we take the time to listen to our kid’s reasoning and see it from their point of view, the kid is usually right.
YouTube Made Me Do It
“YouTube made me do it” is a common saying in my house. Some parents think letting their kids watch YouTube, but not me. It only accelerated his curiosity. One day we were hanging out, and my son was watching YouTube, and he selected a video of what we call a light-up parade. His interest in parades peeked because we had just taken him to the Memorial Day parade, so he was on a kick. I didn’t think much of it until the videos started. Let me tell you, once he found that video, it was on like Donkey Kong. That night we had all his Hess Trucks out and decorated them in glow sticks. We turned off the lights and cranked up the music, and created our own light-up parade.
“YouTube made me do it” is a common saying in my house. Some parents think letting their kids watch YouTube, but not me. It only accelerated his curiosity. One day we were hanging out, and my son was watching YouTube, and he selected a video of what we call a light-up parade. His interest in parades peeked because we had just taken him to the Memorial Day parade, so he was on a kick. I didn’t think much of it until the videos started. Let me tell you, once he found that video, it was on like Donkey Kong. That night we had all his Hess Trucks out and decorated them in glow sticks. We turned off the lights and cranked up the music, and created our own light-up parade.
These parades went on for weeks, but it opened his mind to our community workers and all they do for us. That one video spiraled into him wanting to learn more about firefighters, police officers, and EMTs. That was all it took for him to discover that he wants to be a Paramedic when he grows up. If you are on the fence about your kids watching YouTube check out 3 Pros And Cons Of Kids Watching YouTube.
Final Thoughts
Toys bring his imagination to life, and I am always willing to play with him. As a working mom, I carry a lot of guilt because I get to spend so little time with him that I make the most of the time we spend together. Would I like to sleep in on the weekends until 10 a.m.? Of course, but the time with my son is more important. So when he comes barreling into my room on the weekends, he is excited because he knows that I will get up and play with him. Snuggles first, though, because I love my snuggles in the morning.
When he was just a baby, I decided that I would not cram information down his throat because learning should be fun. So teaching him through toys and playing is the route I chose. If he has an interest, I feed into it with books and toys, and because of that, he is a bright, intelligent boy that loves to learn. I know that he will grow up one day, and he won’t want to play with toys anymore. So I take the initiative to spend that quality time playing together because I know there will come a time when hanging out with his friends instead of Mama will kick in.
My House might be a giant toy box, but it is also filled with love, laughter, and quality time together. I will take the giant toy box over a stuffy home any day.
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