Does your wife have a solution for convincing relatives to stop buying tons of electronic toys that light up and buzz for Christmas and birthdays?
No, don't.
If he desconstructs his favorite electronic toy and isn't able to get it working again, that's an opportunity for a lesson on how to take things apart without causing (more) damage, how cheaply and non-repairably many things are built (and the value of good design), how anything is repairable if you're cussed and resourceful enough (and when not to be), or any number of other lessons, limited only by your imagination.
BTW., I just shared it with my cow-orkers, and the first reaction was: <<And so one day, you buy yourself a $1200 drone, then come home after work and see your kid smiling and saying "daddy, daddy! look, I took it apart all by myself!"...>> ;).
It might not be exactly this, but we have spent over a decade training our relatives, and after 6 children, we only get clothes (win!), wooden toys (win!), and board-games/puzzles (win!).
Otherwise, start asking for gift receipts or find out where they shopped so you can, “find something similar”...
My wife and I agree on these things and think it best for our child. Our relatives and cousins look at us like we are from another planet LOL!
If it helps we can argue that it breaks the "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize" guideline.
A young child (0 to ~3 years) does not understand electronics. The input output response from a battery device cannot be easily guessed from only physical examination, thus it is not a good toy to develop a mental model.
I would much rather my child (at a very early age), form the basic mental models of the physical world so that she can predict how the world will react around her. Throwing a ball, banging a percussive instrument, stacking blocks. These all help form physical models of the world.
What solidified this belief for me was watching my ~11 month old frantically pushing the button on a battery operated rocking horse she had received as a present from her aunt. My child could not understand why the horse had made noise before, but (once I took the batteries out) did not make noise. After seeing that, I realized that we needed to make things simpler before we made them more complex.
On the other hand, my 2 year old niece can easily take an iPad, unlock it, swipe through the pages and folders, find YouTube, and watch videos. And in an ever-increasing electronics-driven world, I don't think it's bad to learn some of those skills at that age. (Though her screentime is limited and she also plays with wooden toys etc.)
Ofcourse explaining a battery or 'the internet' would be too complex at that age, but apparently the 'input output response from a battery device can be easily guessed'.
That’s the thing about parenting: you will have to make thousands and thousand of decisions without the benefit of rigorous peer-reviewed studies. You can’t wait for the science, because your kids are growing up now.
It's true you can't wait for science. But it's important to realize when something is mostly an arbitrary choice. The anti-tech sentiment that's popular in parenting these days is exactly that - an arbitrary choice without solid foundations.
Perhaps there is a sort of knee-jerk retro-hippie back-to-the-basics trend happening nowadays. But the choice to limit children's exposure to electronic gadgets really isn't arbitrary anywhere I've seen it.
It's more typically reasoned, even painstakingly thought-out choice. One made based on insufficient information, yes, but also with limited time to make the decision.
For example, it is obvious to me from direct observation of my own kids that a box of polished wooden blocks leads to higher-quality play than any of the electronic mainstream crap that they've gotten as gifts: the creative process of building, non-predetermined outcomes, some thinking required, trial-and-error is rewarded, obvious self-satisfaction (and alternatively, frustration), etc.
Likewise, I could provide a litany of reasons why I think spending 30 minutes with a paper coloring or drawing book is an unambiguously better activity for my kids than an unrestricted iPad (which == YouTube, nearly 100% of the time).
An iPad locked to one of the drawing programs — that's pretty different. Once they've mastered crayons and pens on paper, I'll let them do that pretty much as long as they want to.
These decisions might not all have "solid foundations" — perhaps I'm wrong in some of my assumptions. But they also aren't "arbitrary". There is reasoning behind them, even if the reasoning may not be totally correct, and the data is necessarily incomplete.
I suspect the same is true for most parents.
Tell me, where do you draw the line in your personal life for needing scientific evidence before making a choice? Surely you did not have scientific evidence for every single decision you've made.
When our first kid was born, we just told everyone, "Toys that take batteries will have the batteries taken out. If taking the batteries out defeats the purpose of the toy, we will instead take it straight to Goodwill."
We had two instances of people giving him an electronic toy anyway. Both happened before he had really developed object permanence, so he didn't even notice when that Christmas gift was gone on December 26. The giver (both were from the same person) remembered, though, and it hasn't been a problem since.
She probably still thinks we're jerks, but most people with non-adult kids reacted positively and even said they wished they had thought to do the same thing.
Obvs the whole "before they develop object permanence" thing means this probably doesn't work if you don't start before or soon after your first child's birth.
My kids had remote controlled car before they were able to push buttons. For that reason.
I honestly dont understand hate some people have against those things. Blinking and sounding toys have same future as old school toys - few chosen become favorite and stuck in bed, the rest forgotten in drawer or box relatively soon. No reason to fear them.
But it’s hard when it comes to birthdays or Xmas gifts from others. My sister in law offered for their last birthday a playmobil police car to my son and a Frozen pearls craft set to my daughter.
At the end, both my kids played with the car and made bracelets with pearl. But, seriously...
Wrong. At six months he picked out the single car in between the dolls, toy food etc, turned it around, started moving the wheels and making noises.
Older then six months, six months old are not bringing toys to people due to lack of ability to crawl effectively.
I also remember what 6 months old are like. If their actions are proof of universal anything to you, then it is your own bias. They don't play pretend knowingly yet, they only mimic a bit. Nor are cosistent.
But interesting is that whenever child or me does or wish something gender noncomforming, like almost always, someone feels the need to explain that someone else is gender conforming.
Are you sure? What about people growing up with cars, curious about what goes on under the hood from childhood, with references available on how they work, that they can connect to what they've seen themselves? Maybe this gives an edge over those whose learning started later?
Human technology is a long ladder of improvements one generation makes over the one prior. It's not obvious that stone age toys are the best preparation for contributing to the next step of the ladder.
That said, I am afraid the Internet is a game changer here. I didn't have Internet access since... ~13, AFAIR, and even that was over dial-up. Given how today there's infinite amounts of brain crack streaming down the ever wider tubes, I fear a kid left in front of an Internet-connected computer will never get bored enough to start tinkering.
So I'm all for lots of unsupervised computer time, but for my future kids, I plan to not introduce Internet access too soon. Mind you - I'm not worried about the content (porn and other usual scares), just about it being like more addictive TV.
Well, I guess we let the kids play with those presents for the holidays they were given in. Then, after the grandparents have departed, the toys slowly start "disappearing"...
We put them in a special closet that the kids still have access to.
Every once in a while the kids will dive into that closet and rediscover some of the louder flashier toys.
But, mainly, it's just the simple stuff left out on the shelves for every day access.
It reminds me of 'attract mode' used in slot machines and arcades games, though I at least see that there's direct commercial benefit to this.
Stealing my child's attention for no significant gain to them is plain wrong. Perhaps the commercial rationale is that the toy appears to be more popular than it really is, leading to further sales.
Or perhaps the developers just had a few hundred bytes and a timer interrupt to spare.
And good toys (which tend to live a lot longer than crap ones) too can be taken to the goodwill later on and then will make someone else happy.
I also like the suggestion here to take them apart and use it as a learning experience, knowing that they probably won't get put back together in working order.
If that idea offends you, I will say again: I also really like the idea of taking them apart, knowing they are unlikely to get put back together in working order. So if the idea of donating them doesn't work for you, go with that.
Or come up with some other solution. My comment in a forum in no way impels you to do as I said.
So we (wife and I) had an idea. Instead of gifting them toys, take that money and put it in their savings account (one account per kid). We slowly managed to convince the rest of the immediate family (grandmas resisted a bit) to follow the example and now the kids have a growing savings account (which hopefully they'll appreciate later in life).
With that said, we didn't stop giving them toys altogether, they just get a lot less toys which makes the ones they get that much more special.
This has greatly improved the value (in our mind) of the gifts. We especially like gifts that are enjoyed with the gift giver.
Just be open with people and they'll usually respond positively (in our experience).
Believe me, drums and whistles can be noisy too :-D !