Vol. 18 - Too Many Toys? In a Pandemic?!

On spoiling our kids

If you come into our home, the first thing you’ll notice is the toys.

They’re everywhere.

Buckets full of Magna-Tiles, Frozen dolls, spaceships, and construction vehicles. Not one but two small tables with those interlocking train tracks. Books, blocks, and balls of all shapes, sizes, colors, and bounciness.

And the Hot Wheels. They’re everywhere. Hundreds upon hundreds of Hot Wheels and their requisite tracks and playsets.

Simply walking through our home can prove hazardous to your unshoed feet.

Every day, I have to step over the Power Wheels that our son uses to do endless laps around our interconnected kitchen-dining room-living room-kitchen circuit. Every day, I kick little toys out of my way.

In our carport? More toys. Bikes, at least one other Power Wheels vehicle, and balls, racquets, and bats everywhere.

In the backyard? Yep. Slides, scooters, and one little push car that my son likes to ride down the big hill in our backyard. We call it Knieveling.

Our son’s life is full of toys and more than a few people have commented on the fact that we spoil our kid (and they’re all Boomers. You do the math).

Yeah, we spoil our kid. We spoil the fuck out of our kid.

We spoil our kid because he’s spent exactly half of his entire life in the clutches of a global pandemic. And much of those two years have been spent stuck at home with mom and dad. He’s only started school somewhat recently and even that has been under fire of the constant interruption of anything resembling a routine.

Now that things are a creeping a bit closer to normalcy, we’ve slowed down on the buying of new toys exponentially. And as time goes on, it’s something we’re definitely having to untangle.

But in the pandemic’s earliest days, we were buying him a new toy almost daily.

Most often, it wasn’t something big.

Rather, it was a single Hot Wheels car or one of those little standalone Lego projects that come in a plastic bag and ends up being a kayak or a polar bear or something even more innocuous like a balloon or a cheap pair of gas station sunglasses.

One thing Emily and I have shared in common since the day we met is our general disregard for material possessions. Rather, we revel in the experiences and the adventures we can share together (no doubt due to the fact that we spent so many years living in cramped urban apartments, where material possessions must be kept to an absolute minimum).

For us, Christmas and birthday presents have often been trips or experiences.

If they are material, they’re usually things that can help facilitate those trips or experiences; things like bikes, new running shoes, or kayaks.

And that’s how we plan to raise our kids, with the realization that, as much joy as a bunch of Matchbox cars might bring him, a new bike or a trip to the beach or the mountains or even the trampoline park a few towns over will arm him with memories that may last forever.

Still, we love toys. And we love the joy they bring our son.

He’s going to have the rest of his life to learn how to temper his expectations, to realize that adventures and the memories they create are more important than cheap plastic playthings, to not expect a new toy every time I walk in the door.

But right now, he’s a four-year-old kid who has spent much of his very short life stuck at home with his parents.

So yeah, for now, we’re going to continue to spoil the fuck out of him.