If our daughter asks us for a construction game or a ball, we run to buy them, happy to be educating her without gender stereotypes. However, if our child asks us for dolls or a cart, do we react the same?
If the answer is that we would not be depriving our son of a very valuable experience, since these toys are a great tool to educate in equality. Also, play with dolls It helps them to develop empathy.
Emotions are not just girls thing
Educating in emotions is one of the great steps that parents have taken today regarding the previous generation. We want happy children, but who also know how to face the challenges of life and that happens to have a good emotional base that we cultivate practically since they are born, every time we take them in their arms when they cry.
When they grow older they they learn through the game And that's where we can use toys as learning tools. Why is it great that they play with dolls?
- They are symbolic toys They help you understand the world. When they imitate us and play to be doctors or police or when they become gentlemen and superheroes they are learning to differentiate the real from the imaginary.
- They serve to develop empathy, because they make them put themselves in the place of the other.
- They are a great tool for educate on equality: Children feeding, kissing or walking in their cart to their baby as Dad does with the little brother helps them understand that caring for the children is a matter of two.
- They are affective toys: If the child is happy he will hug his doll, if he is angry he can throw him to the ground. If you constantly scold your dolls you may be receiving too many reprimands.
- They help them internalize the rules: Many times our children repeat to their dolls the messages we give them every day: "Now you have to go to sleep because it is too late and you have to rest." By repeating it, they are endorsing the idea and can serve to make the time to go to bed more bearable.
- The shy children they benefit a lot from the game with dolls because they can behave as they are without fear of the reaction of others.
Not only for girls
A study by the Technological Institute of Children and Leisure Products (AIJU) shows the change that has occurred in recent years in the preferences for toys: almost 60% of children play with dolls and 35% of children Families buy dolls / dolls for their sons.
However, there are still a certain reservation when buying dolls and carts for children, and not only happens with toys. Much of the clothes my little daughter is wearing is inherited from her brother, but sometimes I wonder if it would be the same if she were the oldest. Would you send my son to the nursery with those pastel shirts, with all those bows, strass... I really don't know.
And, in the clothing industry as in the toy industry, a change is needed. Parents can encourage our children to play with dolls, but we also need toys with which children can feel identified, beyond the pink strollers full of ties and babies.
Ideas that inspire
If playing with dolls has so many advantages and I don't find any that I like in stores, why not create them myself? Thus began Wonder Crew, a small firm that designs dolls inspired by superheroes, firefighters, astronauts or adventurers.
The dolls have different skin tones and come with a costume so that the child can play with "mini-me" to be the same character: "It is like an equal, but also small enough and vulnerable enough for a child to take care of him, "says Laurel Wider, a New York psychologist who had the idea of creating this doll collection when her son returned one day from school saying that her teacher had told her that" boys are not supposed to cry. "
As parents we have the task of educating our sons and daughters avoiding transmitting gender stereotypes. As consumers, demand that sexism end in the toy industry and, in the meantime, let children play with whatever they want. Dolls are also a children's thing.
In babies and more So yes: the catalog of toys that breaks with gender stereotypes and that other toy stores should imitate, The 12 most frequent mistakes we make when buying toys from children
