I knew it was all over when my three-year-old son walked up to me and said’Heyyyy, Max, you wanna play-eee BEEDEO GAYEEMS?’
When he wanted something back then, he would prompt you to ask HIM the question so he could confirm that he wanted what you had to offer. That little guy was slick! If you haven’t guessed by my grammatical mangling of my son’s phonic skills, he loves video games with a passion. And as I said earlier, he was JUST THREE. Imagine what I have to deal with now that he is five-and-a-half. The child can beat me AND his father at Mortal Kombat on our beat-up Super Nintendo console, and he can boot up my PC and back out of his programs when he is done. It took me years to learn what my son can do just out of diapers. Is there something wrong here?
As you can tell, I have a brilliantly intelligent son. My youngest is no slouch, either, even though his tastes are less sophisticated. He is content to watch Big Brudder play on the PC, or to pretend to play along on the Nintendo, even though the second gamepad is usually disconnected, with the game set for one player. My youngest’s strengths lie in recognizing printed numbers and letters and telling you what they are. He also has an excellent power of recall, and recites entire phrases from commercials and songs. This from my child who used to ram his toy car repeatedly into the same portion of the wall, instead of backing up and turning around! Bad car! Take THAT! POW!
Needless to say, we don’t waste a lot of money on toy cars for my youngest.
It’s difficult to know what to buy for your sons when you have more than one. My two little men were entirely different from each other as infants and as toddlers. Now that I have a preschooler and a kindergartener, I run into many quandaries. My oldest loves sophisticated toys with myriad small parts that can get sucked up into the vacuum cleaner. My youngest loves to try to eat those tiny parts, making that point moot. My oldest loves matchbox cars and motorcycles; my youngest also loves them, but prefers to run off with them when the oldest is concentrating on lining them up into perfectly straight rows, or otherwise he just interrupts their path if they are the kind that you can rev up with a pull-strip and let go.
I have come to a few practical conclusions about buying toys for my children that may help others decide what to avoid, and what to consider bringing home in a Pokemon gift bag with a blue tinsel bow:
Watch the age limits: We have trouble with this one in our house. My oldest’s toys with an age limit of’five and up’ are all wrong for his younger brother if they have small parts that could be a choking hazard, or if they are made fragilely enough to break under hard impact(i.e., my youngest throwing it across the room if his brother tells him to give it back).
Don’t worry about’gender’ issues if you are considering a kitchen set: My oldest had a great set of McDonald’s pretend plastic food, and he used to pretend to serve me a chicken Mcnugget Happy Meal, complete with a toy if I was good and finished my fries. My youngest adores the kitchen set that my sister-in-law bought for them with its microwave oven that dings when you open it, the pots and pans, utensils, cups to pretend to drink from, and a tiny sink to pile the dishes when you are done. My sons hardly touched the tool set and carpenter’s table with a little plastic winch, toolbox, bots, screws, etc. that I blew fifty dollars on for Christmas two years ago. What a waste! Mind you, the same’gender-free’ rule didn’t apply to dolls, since my son announced to me’Barbies are for GIRLS, Mom, you’re a GIRL, do you want those?’ one day when he noticed them in a Toys R Us color ad in the paper. But some boys LOVE to pretend to make food.
Books: Don’t even bother with any book not made out of sturdy cardboard for the first two three years or so. Pop-up books should wait for another couple of years, since boys are prone to enjoy those pop-up characters so much, they may be inclined to tear them apart in their zeal. Many a pop-up book has bitten the dust that way. Another type of book that I have been striving to avoid bringing home are the ones with a button pad of sounds that let you’hear and read’ the stories. These take two to three tiny yet expensive batteries that you can almost never find anywhere easy like the supermarket; you will have to get them somewhere more expensive like the electronics section of Target, or at RadioShack. We have about eight’dead’ sound books at our house. My sons just look at me with bereft expressions, saying’It doesn’t WORK, Mom, no sirve.’ Those button pads get grimy from sticky little fingers that have been eating Chee-tohs pressing each sound too firmly, wearing it out and making it repeat too many times, driving you batty. Murphy’s Law for sound books: The more annoying, shrill, or flatulent the noise, the more your child will love it and press that button.
Talk to your spouse: My husband and I got into multiple arguments over an ugly WCW talking wrestler doll that my son eventually received for Christmas. All day and all week long, my son acted like a little savage, throwing that doll across the room, tackling it, stepping on it, pinching its nose, and shouting its crude little wrestler’s phrases back at it at the top of his lungs. We both agree that it’s a lousy toy now; but it would have been better if we agreed that it was a lousy toy BACK THEN.
Clothes and shoes: If you have to buy clothes for someone’s child, keep in mind that they aren’t likely to express delight if they are under the age of twelve. They do, however, love cartoon character sneakers with Velcro flaps instead of laces. I have also noticed that little boys often love the villains of whatever the cartoon show or movie was instead of the hero, surprisingly enough. My son loved his Darth Maul sneakers.
Electronic games are fair game: My mom has bought little handheld electronic games with brightly colored buttons for kids three and up for my two-and-a-half-year-old, which he loves, but unfortunately, so does his brother. They fight continuously over the Cookie Monster game with the little mixing bowl that has’cookie batter’ that you can stir, and’cookie’ shaped buttons to push. Just because my oldest is a whiz at Madden 2000, that doesn’t mean he is above wrangling for a turn at feeding Cookie Monster the’purple circle cookie’ when Cookie Monster asks him to. If you have more than one son, be careful with these.
Videos: This is a nice gift, but again, keep in mind the age group that a movie is suited for. My oldest loved’Tarzan, ’ but my youngest cries every time he sees the first ten minutes of it, with the roaring tiger slashing its claws at Tarzan’s mother. My boys love slapstick action and’cartoony’ violence in movies like’Run Spot Run.’ They also both loved’Emperor’s New Groove’ and’Mulan, ’ partly because the villains weren’t particularly scary, and because there wasn’t anything pink and sissy in either of those films. My boys also love cartoons with lots of flatulent sound effects and pratfalls. That beats nudity and gore any day, in my book.
Keep it simple: Make sure that gifts for boys don’t cost more to replace the batteries over the coming months than it did to buy the toy. Avoid things that have to be assembled with tools more complex than a Phillips screwdriver or a socket wrench. Actually, that’s not a bad idea for ADULT gifts, either.
Keep it cheap: They’re boys. They break things. What else do you need to know?