According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, play should be considered as an essential element in a child’s life. Play is known to nurture parent-child bond, education, development and happiness (Kara, Aydin, & Cagiltay, 2014). The United Nations High Commission for Human Rights has also come to recognize play as being a right of all children worldwide. All these factors bring out the importance and relevance of playing and why no child should be prevented from engaging in it. However, over the past decades, the amount of play time has been reducing at home and school. This is because most schools and parents have started focusing only on the academics thus most of the time that was committed to free play has been focused to reading. With no free play, the child’s creativity, emotional strength, physical, cognitive and dexterity are affected.
The rates of anxiety and depression among most young adults today are on the increase. In a country like the USA, it is estimated that there are about five to eight times many college and high school students who become diagnosed with anxiety and depression as compared to about fifty years ago. All these factors affect the mental health of these young people, and they are not caused by any uncertainties or dangers in the larger world. It is because these young people lack control over their lives as a result of lacking free play as they were still children. A child’s freedom to free play allows them to explore on their own without any adult involvement or direction (Gray, 2010). The child can solve their problems, have control over their lives, come up with their interest and develop the competence to attain those interests. The deprivation of a child the freedom to play is what has led to most of them suffering from mental health disorders as they grow up into young adults for they lack control over their lives.
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In kick starting the child’s play, a toy can be one excellent means by which this is achieved. A toy will help the child in the development of their mental, physical, creativity and emotional strength. However, in the current modern world, millions of toys have been manufactured and can fulfill the child’s needs and wants. The clever marketing advertisements by the toy manufacturers have made most consumers (parents) to spend hundreds of dollars on toys (Tanz, Christoffel, & Sagerman, 1985). The primary reason is that they would want to make the child happy thus losing the focus on nurturing the child’s creativity. Most of the parents become confused between play whereby the child becomes a participant and entertainment whereby the child is just an observer of what the toy is doing.
In the enhancement of a child’s literacy and oral languages skills, storytelling has come out to become the most efficient method. With advancement in technology, many opportunities exist that allow for children to tell their stories. This is through the making of toys known as smart toys. These toys have excellent features that allow the children to attend a story telling activity interactively. These toys are good examples of “ideal toys.” This is because they have the capability to add value to child’s development and growth. Story tech is one example of a toy company that has come to use a mixed reality by developing storytelling toys. Mixed reality involves the use of computer-generated data with real-world components to create environments that are interactive ( Kara, Aydin, & Cagiltay, 2014) .
Story tech was able to create a climate that promotes storytelling by integrating computer and traditional toys. This environment is made up of four toys, background cards, radio frequency identification system and computers that present the content which has been developed using Adobe Flash player ( Kara, Aydin, & Cagiltay, 2014) . This technology helps the child in that if a child places plush toy into the RFID, it produces the particular animals sound and also appear on the screen.
When five children aged four years old were provided with passive plush toys. Five kids took part in the trial that experimented the passive background cards and plush toys, two of them were not comfortable in the environment thus did not tell any story. The researchers intimated most of them; thus they focused on just playing with toys and used short statements. The same number of children aged five years old was subjected to the same test, and they all gave stories that had important structures. However, the content of their stories was made up very simple structures and lacked any imagination. It revolved around how the plush toys and background looked. This meant that the traditional toys did not help them tell creative stories. The same number of children aged six was subjected to the same test, and they all told stories just like the five-year-old group. However, at that age, their sentence structure is more complex, and they had systematic flow. However, just like the five-year-olds, their stories lacked imagination bringing out the insufficiency brought about by using traditional toys for child play ( Kara, Aydin, & Cagiltay, 2014) .
The same three groups of children were put through another test; however, this time round they used Story Tech. After they had been shown how to use StoryTech, they played with their toys with great interest. However, just like the control group, they produced stories using the shorter sentence, and they put their focus mostly on the objects rather than story telling. The placing of the characters in Story Tech was more fun to them rather than story telling ( Kara, Aydin, & Cagiltay, 2014) . The group of five-year-olds who used Story Tech was better than their control group. They were able to produce stories made up of much longer sentences. They also were able to use their imagination to produce the stories. The children aged 6 performed the best using Story tech and were even more creative than the other groups regarding storytelling and expressing their joy when using the smart toy.
From the study, it is indeed evident that age plays a major factor when playing with the Smart toys. The children aged four years old using the smart toy, and the control groups showed no difference in their reactions. The age five children did not tell any stories when they played with the passive toys, but when the smart toy was introduced, they participated in storytelling the children aged six years old had the best improvement in suing smart toys. They were able to improve their creativity and expressed joys while playing with the toys. This indicates that the smart toys are ideal for children aged 5 and six years old. It helps them develop their creativity and imagination through storytelling ( Kara, Aydin, & Cagiltay, 2014) . However, the children in age four brackets despite them not showing any improvements on how they used the smart toys, they still showed enthusiasm.
Most parents buy their children toy guns which in this case are “bad toys”. The toy guns come with projectiles that may end up injuring the child. Studies carried out in the USA have also been able to find out that toys such as guns can cause face or eye injuries mostly to young boys. Toys that might cause injuries to the child regardless of parents purchasing them for play should be avoided. A toy should be one that adds value to the life of a child but not causes harm to them or their friends.
From the two articles, the smart toys are the ideal toys. This is because they add value to a child especially to those in the age five and six brackets. It helps in boosting their creativity and imagination through the construction of well-structured sentences through storytelling. However some toys such as toy guns despite parents purchasing them for a child’s play, they add injuries to them; thus they are of no use hence the became “bad toys’ ( Tanz, Christoffel, & Sagerman, 1985) .
In conclusion, play is essential for the growth and development of a child. It is what determines how the child will behave once they start growing into young adults. Lack of play has been attributed to anxiety and depression disorders which affect the mental health. In kick-starting a child’s play, the parents will most likely buy those toys. However, it has been clearly seen that there are two types of toys; “ideal and bad.” Parents should ensure whatever toy they get their child, it will help them in their development and growth.
References
Kara, N., Aydin, C. C., & Cagiltay, K. (2014). User study of a new smart toy for children's storytelling. Interactive Learning Environments , 22 (5), 551-563.
Gray, P. (2010). The Decline of Play and Rise in Children's Mental Disorders. Psychology Today , 1 , 26.
Tanz, R., Christoffel, K. K., & Sagerman, S. (1985). Are toy guns too dangerous?. Pediatrics , 75 (2), 265-268.
