“Lloyd,” he tells me. “His name is Lloyd.” Naturally. Why would a green Lego Ninjago be called anything else? The plastic figurine has shot to top spot on my son Sam’s Christmas list.
Anyone who knows a young child will sympathise. They crave the Barbie Colour Reveal Deluxe Styling Head that promises instant-but-fleeting joy, whereas we want to buy the woodland activity kit that will surely nurture the body and soul.
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If you find yourself despairing at such choices, help is at hand. Thanks to a growing understanding of the cognitive benefits of certain toys, we now have a better idea about the relative merits of different ones. This Christmas, I decided to use the research to help me identify the perfect toy – or at least get as close as I could.
Digging into this world, I soon discovered that some toys really are better than others for young brains, found that computer games aren’t as evil as you might think and uncovered the secret to buying a toy that won’t languish at the back of a cupboard.
You may think that toys are a relatively modern invention, but they have been part of our lives for millennia. Analyses of rock fragments in Western Cape, South Africa, dating back 60,000 to 80,000 years, suggest that children may have tinkered with blunt, functionally useless copies of adult stone tools. These ancient playthings are thought to have been key to the development of cognitive skills, such as our ability to envision alternative scenarios and to conjure new ideas that led to innovations such as the wheel and weaving.
Toys today can be just as cognitively nourishing, says child development researcher at Middlesex University London. “The types of toys children play with can have a profound and lasting effect on the brain,” she says, but some are better at achieving this than others.
Consider a Thomson family favourite: puzzles. at the University of Chicago, Illinois, and her colleagues, found that children of between 2 and 4 years of age who toys have better spatial skills than those who don’t. help our and have been shown to in these disciplines.
“When we’re searching for the perfect toy, we really have to ask ‘the perfect toy for what?’ ” says at King’s College London. “Different toys are good for promoting different outcomes. Dolls are particularly good for promoting social skills, construction toys are good for spatial reasoning, balls are good for increasing exercise.”
Surprisingly, the best kind of toy might not even be a toy at all
Nevertheless, particular attention has been given to toys that help develop executive function – a type of thinking that enables us to plan, focus our attention and juggle multiple tasks. It is associated with better academic performance, helps us regulate our emotional response in an argument and is vital for . It is also a trait that develops rapidly from the ages of 2 to 7. Several studies have shown that it is possible to in children by getting them to engage in 10 minutes of pretend play each day. So that is a tick for things like dolls, train sets, a doctor’s kit – anything that stimulates the imagination.
What about the toys to avoid? “Anything that is plastic and rigid you’ll find at the bottom of a drawer because it doesn’t allow personalised play,” says Harding. “Any toy that erodes the capacity for creative thinking is on my no-go list.” In academia, these toys are called convergent – they have a single solution or limited number of ways to be used in play. Divergent, or open-ended toys, like Lego or magnetic tiles, can be played with in multiple ways. Several studies show that children who use divergent toys are generally compared with children who have convergent toys.
This is ringing bells. I recently bought my kids one of those steady-hand games where you steer a hoop at the end of a handle around a wire, which buzzes if the hoop touches it. They were delighted on the day, but it hasn’t been used since. A convergent toy with a single purpose doesn’t appeal for long.
Surprisingly, the best kind of toy might not even be a toy at all. There is growing enthusiasm for “loose parts play” (LPP), Hashmi tells me. LPP is any interactive material that isn’t initially intended for play, but that, with a little imagination, can be manipulated in many ways – a cardboard box, a jar of shells or a pack of paper clips, say. – particularly for older children – including promoting self-esteem, encouraging social interactions and fostering internal dialogues. “[That] is a really important message to get across,” says Hashmi. “Not just for people who can’t afford the latest toy, but also for sustainability.”
On that note, it is also worth knowing that less may be more when it comes to toys. When toddlers were given between four and 16 toys to play with, those who had fewer to choose from
But let’s face it, telling my kids that they are going to have fewer toys for Christmas, and that their presents may include paper clips, would not go down well. It is all very well knowing which toys are best for their cognitive chops, but what children desire doesn’t necessarily match what is good for them.
For instance, Sam loves dinosaurs and trucks. I worry he is too obsessed with “boy toys”. This preference for gendered toys is in part influenced by our genetics, says Jac Davis at the University of Cambridge, but mostly it is cultural. Children in villages with no access to modern technology, for instance, show , unlike kids elsewhere. However, it is OK for children to have this preference, says Davis: it shows they can interpret the world around them and decide where they fit – but parents should vary the toys their children have access to so they have the chance to develop a variety of skills.
Fine, but what about Sam’s growing preference for digital toys? To me, the perfect toy instinctively feels like it should be physical, not the latest PlayStation 5 console offering. Is there any cognitive value in a 4-year-old being able to complete a PS5 game? Just asking for a friend.
To find out, Hashmi and his colleagues analysed the brain activity of 4 to 8-year-olds while they played with dolls with an adult or on their own. The team compared this with when the children played open-ended games on a tablet. The research focused on activity in brain regions related to empathy, perspective taking and executive function. “When they played with dolls alone, it activated these brain regions more than playing the tablet alone. They also talked more – that was quite a stark comparison,” says Hashmi, suggesting that it may be better for kids to play with physical toys rather than digital ones when alone.
Interestingly though, when an adult played the computer game with the child, their brain activity matched that of playing with dolls alone. “The presence of the adult was more important than the toy itself,” says Hashmi. Other studies back this up: when preschoolers play with adults, they boost the grey matter in their brain, which is associated with in children up to 8. Meanwhile, most data that shows toys boosting cognitive skills comes from studies in which , rather than alone. The idea that this is optimal is also consistent with studies showing that youngsters learn best in the context of , where a child performs an action and there is an adult around to respond appropriately.
It is a nice ending to my search. “Perhaps the ultimate secret to choosing the perfect toy has nothing to do with the toy itself, but which one you like the most,” says Hashmi. “It’s the one you’ll play with.”
