Must-Buy Toys Have Nothing on An Empty Closet and a Kid's Imagination

We’ve all been there.

You find the perfect present for your young child – whether it’s the retro Radio Flyer wagon, a United States 3D puzzle that will both amuse and educate your little one, or even the stand-in-line-for-the-it-toy-of-the-season gem.

You’ve scoured the internet, found the best deals, asked your friends. It was a hard-fought battle, but to find the perfect gift, the one that would send the little apple of your eye into sheer bliss and exhilaration, it was worth it. Every minute online, every minute in line, every moment wrapping it. Because it is, let’s face it, the perfect present.

The big moment comes and you stand poised with video camera in hand, ready to capture the moment when your child realizes just how much you love them. Only someone so adoring would spend this kind of time and money to make them this happy! As they start to tear at the paper, they stop: that shiny bow adorning the gift seems to have caught their attention. They cease tearing at the paper and are instead now dancing around the Christmas tree, sticking the bow to their jammies as you want to scream, OPEN THE PRESENT, THE BEST PART IS INSIDE!

And that’s when you remember: a child’s imagination really does rock.

It’s a common mistake made by parents. We have all watched a toddler care more about the box that the expensive present comes in then the present itself. Maddening though it may be at the time, doesn’t it sort of warm your heart to know that when you’re a kid, money and labels don’t really matter? Take this story, for example.

A few weeks ago, I caught my 15-month-old son pulling open the spice cabinet, as he does on a daily basis. I watched him take out the plastic spice jars, one by one, and stack them as though they were blocks. While relaying this story to a friend, she told me that as a child, she would pull all of the toys out of her toy closet and go inside with a flashlight to play “cave.” She remarked that without a doubt, the cost of that flashlight was much less than her entire Barbie collection, which lay on the other side of the door.

It made me think of past stories. The last time I was with my kids at Deli After Dark, we played Hangman while we waited for our meal (my favorite puzzle: 5-year-old Georgia’s stumper which was “I CAN RUN”). Or when I played on the beach in Truro with my son Ben – we drew a makeshift bull’s-eye in the sand with our feet, and used rocks to toss inside each ring. And of course, the ever-popular wooden spoon that you give to a teething baby at Christmas Eve Mass. It will keep them quiet for even the longest of sermons.

I guess what this whole exercise made me remember was that as a young child, no amount of money, label or “it-toy” can measure up to good ole’ fashioned kid imagination. Toys “R” Us, Amazon and Best Buy might try to put a premium on that, but at the end of the day, that shiny bow, paired with a child’s creativity, is purely priceless.