As our children grow, thoughts about how their personalities, characters, and values will develop start to weigh on us.
With these thoughts, and sometimes worries, we constantly want to do something beautiful for our children. In the rapidly passing time, we sometimes feel that we are missing out on something about our children, leaving something incomplete, or not quite doing it right, as we look at other people, family, surroundings, and sometimes from the media.
For this reason, sometimes we act unconsciously under the pressure of media or the environment, rather than our own logic. We make purchases without questioning the reasons and try to mentally comfort ourselves. The countless toys our children want, the dresses we see on shopping websites, the accessories that their friends show off at school, the phones bought with thoughts like 'Shouldn't my child be left behind?' or the courses attended with thoughts like 'Shouldn't my child lag behind?' – video game consoles, games and apps downloaded on smartphones and tablets because 'everyone's kids are playing them'... and the list goes on endlessly.
Each of these items on this list is actually a serious issue that needs to be evaluated individually. But what I want to evaluate is toys. Toys that our children spend more time with during their childhood than with their family, friends, or school.
However, describing the industrially produced toys of today simply as 'fun products' is no longer possible. They are products that entertain children while teaching them, make them think while playing, and transform them into a character. As experts point out, children's mental activities reach very high levels when playing with toys. These times when imagination and reality intertwine are very valuable for a child's development. These small industrial products play a significant role in shaping the identities of children. In this article, we will examine how toys affect the personalities and values of our children.
The personalities and values of our children begin to take shape in the early years of their lives. Play and toys are a crucial part of this process. Especially toys that allow children to discover their own interests and abilities actually shape their personalities while playing.
Toys play a central role in this process as a natural part of the developmental process, often becoming a part of various games, roles, and relationships. Sometimes a wooden sword can turn a child into a knight, and sometimes a small toy pot can make a girl pretend to be a mother. A badge can make a child into a police officer or a space guardian. A hat can turn a child into an athlete, a miner, a soldier, or anything else the imagination conjures. Simple wooden blocks, which may not have deep meanings in the eyes of adults, can become cities, space adventures, mazes, houses they live in, or castles they imagine in a child's world. Therefore, toys are small but highly effective elements that open the door to a child's imagination.
If you ask what the most important difference is between children and adults, I would say "imagination" in any case. Children have boundless worlds of imagination. Many studies have shown a strong connection between toys and the imagination of children.
Now, let's stop and think for a moment: if toys are the doors to the world of imagination, and children use these toys to create fantasies, what type of toys do you think increases children's ability to imagine?
Please think about this question for a moment, then continue reading.
Research has shown that toys that support children's imagination the most are the ones that are colorless, plain, and have no details. In other words, the fewer details a toy has, the more room for imagination. Paradoxically... Conversely, if a toy has many details, it means there is less room for imagination.
Let me explain this a bit more. Imagine a child has plain, wooden cylinders of different sizes and cubes in front of them. For a girl playing, the cylinders could be a mother and father, while the cubes could represent a house, an apartment, or even a city. Or, one of these cylinders could be a rocket, and another an astronaut, with the cubes representing planets that can be imagined.
Now, let's take an industrial toy with a detailed and established backstory. Imagine we have a rocket, an astronaut, and a lunar surface. Can a child throw the rocket and turn the astronaut into a cowboy? Or suppose the child has toy horses and cowboy figures. Can the child imagine the horse as a rocket and the cowboy as an astronaut?
I hope I have conveyed my point with these examples. In short, the shapes, textures, colors, and stories of toys should expand a child's imagination, not limit it. Because children can develop incredible narratives, roles, and scenes from a simple matchstick, a bottle cap, small pebbles, or a crumpled tissue. Conversely, think about highly detailed figures, whose stories are already known, whose dialogues are memorized even through movies and TV series! Aren't they shaping and limiting children's imaginations? They also reinforce these limitations and impositions through toys, movies, games, and licensed products... Children can't move beyond being like them, talking like them, and role-playing like them!
I hope I have explained the equation between children, toys, personality, and self in detail above. Now, let's delve deeper into the relationship between toys and personality development in children.
Today, if you visit any toy store, you will notice that 70-80% of the shelves are occupied by character-based toys. I use the term 'occupied' for a reason; the situation is really a kind of occupation. Children's television channels (except for TRT Çocuk), YouTube content creators, cartoon producers, and licensed products in children's clothing stores have essentially occupied children through these characters.
What's worse is that these characters are 90% imported from abroad, foreign-patented products. In other words, these are characters produced by global brands such as Marvel, DC, Disney, or Mattel.
You know very well who these characters are. You are probably aware of the transformations and changes in these characters in recent years as well.
Now, let's take a closer look at where these characters come from, the values they represent, and the messages they openly or subtly convey. Strangely, this newly manufactured "hero" generation is almost entirely "superpowered" Americans. Nearly all of them are saviors, extremely powerful, muscular, wearing tights, and even semi-naked with perfect bodies... Moreover, some of them represent a major threat to our societal family structure with their "homosexual" identity, symbolizing a deviant understanding of sexuality. Others are gradually being reimagined in that direction. The smaller ones are colorful, aggressive, warrior-like, very alluring, and selfish! Some are even more sinister; witches, monsters, garbage collectors, zombies, vampires, and even "feces" forms (those who don't believe or are curious can search the internet to see).
Now think about how much today's Generation Z or the new generation of children resemble these characters I described above.
To be candid, they seem to be very similar, don't they? Angry, aggressive, selfish, belligerent, fragile, lacking motivation, and constantly blaming others for their problems, aren't they?
We shouldn't look far for the problem; we should find the solution!
Each of us needs to step back and escape from the strangeness of exposure we experience, such as 'characterless toys,' violent games, 'superheroes,' peer bullying, and peer pressure. After we do that, we need to rescue the children. Because the pressure and manipulation they are exposed to go far beyond what we can see...
Now, my request to you is to sit down and start doing something truly right and good for your child today. Set aside everything that surrounds your child and leads them in a negative direction, as I summarized above, and urgently get rid of them.
Remember, time is passing very quickly. Children, generations are disappearing among these problems.
