Where do you start with buying a learning toy for a child?
Are you the harassed Uncle or Auntie wondering what to buy a niece or nephew? Are you a puzzled Mum or Dad wondering what toy may connect with your child and develop them further?
Truth be told there are simply too many toys for parents to choose from and guess what the parents choice is typically narrowed by advertisers and peer pressure.
Look at every Christmas, there is typically a mad stampede for the en-vogue toy of choice, which inavriably ends-up in the obscure never-never land of the back of the wardrobe once the novelty wears off.
Another factor is are those buying presents actually that bothered whether a toy is going to have the right benefit for the child? My guess and experience is not, but you may disagree.
Do the likes of Argos, Woolworths and Toys R Us and the like actually give people the right choices? Or are mass marketed, mass produced, easy win, easy buy toys with attractive packaging co-ersing people into making an impulse purchase.
Have you ever tried asking a member of staff on whether a specific toy would be good for a childs reading, or writing or arithmitec skills? They haven’t a clue and subsequently a child is then in the hands of the gods.
Unfortunately this is endemic of society and the fast speedy world in which we live in which everything must be done at a pace. Thankfully there are a number of stores which do care about children and that do care about what toys they play with.
Traditional toys, wooden toys, retro toys, learning toys, educational toys call them what you like, they still have a place in homes up and down the UK, it is just a pity that so many people do not get to know about these stores.
I have purchased many of these ‘traditional toys’ but not from the big high street stores, I have always found the time to be purposeful about certain toy purchases. That is not to say that I do not enjoy a visit to Toys R Us? Of course I do, all that fun in one place. All I am saying is don’t expect to find toys that will make use of your child’s imagination and nurture their learning.
My favourite Toy Shops include Mulberry Bush Online Toy Shop which is great for Traditional Toys and Hamleys which is an absolute Aladdins cave!