Parents unplug kids’ rooms

BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Comments 1
Published: November 7, 2009

Once upon a time, the ideal for a child’s room was a cozy haven filled with sturdy push-pull toys, handmade dolls and baskets of dress-up clothes.

Multimedia

Photoview all photos

That was before batteries, computer programs for toddlers and the array of stuff that talks, squawks, jangles and jolts.

Some parents want to lower the volume on tech toys and on children’s environment as a whole.

Amanda Heravi, of Larchmont, N.Y., said her toddler, Jake, and his new sister, Lilia, should drive the play experience. "Wooden puzzles, trains, blocks — whatever sounds Jake thinks should accompany the toy, I love to hear,” she said. "Then I can tell that he’s really using his imagination.”

Not surprisingly, many designers and retailers responding to this trend are parents themselves.

When Atlanta couple Jim and Erica Lancaster had their first child 14 years ago, "our house began to fill with plastic and electronic toys, which neither suited us nor the environment we wanted for our kids,” Jim Lancaster said.

Erica Lancaster, who had worked on The Nature Co.’s toy development team, envisioned a collection that updated familiar classics; Jack Rabbit Creations was born.

Their jack-in-the-boxes feature characters such as Fifi the poodle and Spots the bunny; there are knitted toys, big fleecy jingle balls and old-fashioned tin lunchboxes.

Melissa and Doug Bernstein have built a toy empire in Wilton, Conn., around that sentiment. Parents stock up on "Melissa and Doug” peg pounders, blocks and puppets that could have been found in a child’s room half a century ago.

"We’re experiencing dramatic age compression — children aren’t children for as many years any more,” Melissa Bernstein said. "Five-year-olds are receiving iPods as gifts, and 3-year-olds are playing video games. Imagination and the ability to innovate come when the brain can engage in open-ended creativity.”

In this intense, strife-ridden world, she said, many parents are eager to try to provide their kids with "real, simple, enriching play.”