Since long before Sharlotte was conceived, I thought about the importance of imagination in childhood. I thought about how imagination needs wide-open space - not cluttered with toys, games, and media – space in which to tumble and stretch, unfettered by the borders of plastic figurines with corporately manufactured personalities.
Phil and I talked about keeping it simple. I remember my own countless hours creating worlds with nothing but grass, trees, and an open mind as props. My first Chinese courtyard was dirt, glass, and a coal pile and even that was enough.
With such memories of my own I thought I would intuitively protect and foster an imaginative space for my daughter. And for the most part I have tried to scrutinize the type and number of toys that come in to my home and have limited TV to an average of perhaps an hour a week if even that. We spend every possible warm moment outside. But I am realizing that it goes beyond that.
Even while attempting to make the obvious steps, I have unwittingly sent subtle messages to my daughter. I have begun the process of squelching imagination and promoting materialism without even realizing it.
Let me explain. She has a lovely play kitchen with a few simple pots and pans. She makes food for hours, all flavors, and serves it to me with gusto over and over. My immediate thought is that I would like to get her play food and serving dishes to embellish this process. But if I do, what am I saying? I am saying that more things can make a better meal than her imagination can. I am saying that I want to replace the food and the cup made out of air with another possession that will take up a little more of the space that I could have left to her imagination.
And then I have sent the message that it is better to have a realistic looking thing than a make-shift imaginative substitute. I replaced the little push cart wagon she would walk her babies in with a doll stroller, dreamed of getting real kitchen chairs for her dollhouse instead of the alphabet blocks, and felt a little bad when she doubled her oven mitt as a dish towel and, later, an animal bath towel. But the thing is Sharlotte doesn’t mind any of those substitutes and in fact that little stroller has stood empty more than the push cart ever did.
The other day a baby doll needed a bib for a meal and Sharlotte snatched up a cardboard block to hold beneath her chin. So startled that it did not look remotely like a real bib, I quickly searched for an object with better resemblance. In the moment, I did not think that I was asking her to downscale her imagination to only like comparisons, to objects that did not require such an imaginative stretch. I didn’t realize the significance of the fact that my daughter didn’t need realism; she could make connections in her imagination that were satisfactory enough to keep the game going.
I am certainly not against toys. Sharlotte’s kitchen and dollhouse alone give her hours of fun, but I do think I need to stop and think critically about each object I add to her life and why I add it. Is it really going to enhance the experience or simply fill in the gaps that my imagination is no longer active enough to fill? Right now when something is lacking in her game or adventure, she can grow that very thing in her mind. But if I keep cluttering that space with things, with realism, perhaps her ability will dwindle.
And I’ve seen those children. Those children begging for things they don’t need simply because they are bored with their own minds, they no longer know how to mentally create what is missing.
And of course there must always be the question when I seek out material objects for my daughter if I am doing so to try to distract her from time she would have otherwise needed my focused attention - using possessions as a type of babysitter. We may not admit it, but perhaps we dream that just one more amusing toy will give us a few minutes to ourselves. And there is nothing wrong with needing to get things done or to pick up a book or project, in fact it is good for our children to see us engaged in these ways; but perhaps we are in danger of substituting toys for time and teaching. That, I guess, is a thought for another day.
