As a parent I am very curious on how often you buy your kids toys. I hear stories of parents going on a weekly trip to the toy store and their kids going home with a new loot every time. Then there are also grandparents who are known to spoil grandchildren. A family friend I know who’s a busy businessman takes his time off during his grandchildren’s school dismissal to bring his apos to Toy Kingdom and buy them whatever they want. The kids ended up having a room (mind you, each of them has a toy room) full of toys and the trip to Toy Kingdom or Toys R Us isn’t fun anymore since they almost bought all the toys they want.
Personally, I’m not against buying children anything they want, if you have the means and the resources, why not? I would however teach the child to work for it by way of a reward system.
We don’t buy our child toys at a whim. It’s because I want my child to realize that her wants can be attained if she’s done well and worked hard for it. Save for the usual occasions like birthdays and holidays, we buy Peaches toys when she’s done well in school, when she’s had a milestone like sleeping by herself, being good at study time and lots more. The toys aren’t always big, it’s little things that I know will be of value to her and things that she needs too (I can be a bit sneaky here, I consider buying her art materials as a reward too or that pretty scissors she can use during study time…)
My daughter luckily, isn’t one to throw tantrums when I tell her we can’t buy the toy just yet. Eventhough I want to buy her toys all the time because my daughter is really great- she’s well behaved than most of the girls her age (or older!), she’s very easy to reason, she listens to what I or her Dad say and she’s our one and only! So naturally, I feel like she’s always earned her new toy but I also don’t want to spoil her and I want to teach her the value for money and what it meant to work hard for something you want.
Another thing we do is we both sit down and gather all her toys and see what she wants to give away in order to make room for new ones but this isn’t a regular thing that we do because she doesn’t own a lot and I encourage her to play with her other toys by rotating what’s on display. It’s like reintroducing the toys to her and she’ll feel it’s something new because she hasn’t seen or played with it for a time.
How about you, how often do you buy your kids toys?
