Toys Limit Imagination and Block Creativity

Essay – final draft.

Toys

I like to watch my niece. She is only five years old, yet I admire how she expresses her thoughts, how she performs in her life, and how she is obtaining her experience. I can compare her with a little scientist. She is full of curiosity, wonder, energy, and confidence. Her mind is constantly growing. And toys are an important tool in her education and development. Toys teach and affect her as she grows up. But certain toys limit her imagination and block creativity, especially toys that represent miniature versions of an adult life.

I have noticed that some of her toys are sort of already designed as a “starter kit” for life. As Roland Barther states in his essay “Toys”, “toys always mean something, and this something is always entirely socialized, constituted by the myth or the techniques of modern adult life.” A good example that proves this statement is my niece’s Barbie doll. On a venture to the toy store we saw a materialistic world designed for Barbies. The furniture was a scaled down copy of fancy couches, beds, chairs, and tables that I see in magazine as well as in big furniture stores. We then found some home accessories, Mini versions of vehicles, and even scaled down models of suburban homes. This is amazing and very convenient for kids. So apparently kids already have limited options and pre-designed mental destinations outlined for them. I remember when I was a child I had dolls as well, but I had to create a world for those doll’s. I built houses from chairs, sewed cloths from different fabrics, and made furniture from boxes and pillows. I used my creativity and imagination all the time. What is happening now in most cases, such as my niece’s, is that modern day kids do not implicate their imagination or creativity. This pre-existing Barbie world destroys any individualistic view of life. My niece relies on some one else’s creativity and imagination, and this fact blocks her own.

My niece has a lot of...