Choosing Toys for Children
When choosing toys, it is important to pick ones that will help children process their experiences and encourage them to use their imagination. It is well worth having the toys used in play therapy in every child's home. These include toys such as Lego, a dolls' house, dolls, puppets, toy cars and animals, as well as art materials such as coloured pencils, finger paints, feathers, magazines and pom-poms. These materials allow children to engage in imaginative play, known as symbolic play, which supports the development of their intelligence. Toys such as costumes, doctor's sets and home-play toys should be part of every child's collection, with no distinction made on the basis of gender.
Anything from the adult world can become an object of play for children. Old chequebooks, restaurant menus, advertising leaflets, magazines and food containers are enormously useful in imaginative games that mimic the adult world. The games children invent with these toys, imitating the adult world, allow them to process their experiences and to learn. You should make sure that a child is not interrupted while creating their play, and that they are allowed to play freely. Unless they ask you to, you should not join in or intervene. Alongside their own free play, you can set aside special play times together and take part in imaginative games under their lead. In this way you might see a child who is afraid of the doctor act out their painful experience over and over again in an imaginative game of their own making, using a doctor's set (or without one), and finally overcome that fear.
When choosing toys for babies, it is important to avoid toys with lots of lights and sounds that overstimulate the nervous system and leave the child passive. What matters is choosing toys that keep the child active and let them use their finger muscles and their fine and gross motor skills, or preparing activities at home. When buying toys, you can make sure you are choosing ones that babies play with actively and that develop their manual skills. Montessori toys have been developed with exactly this in mind.
About the author
Clinical Psychologist Orlit Linet Haklı — After completing a double major in Psychology and Sociology at Koç University, I graduated from the Clinical Psychology programme at Bahçeşehir University. For three years I worked with the Solidarity Association with Refugees and Migrants, a UNICEF project, conducting individual psychotherapy and group art therapy sessions with refugee children and adolescents. I currently provide parental counselling at a private practice in Kadıköy on the Anatolian side of Istanbul, working with children, adolescents and adults using psychodynamic psychotherapy, play therapy and art therapy.