I remember when my seven year old was a baby I thought it was sad and a little embarrasing that he barely had any toys, a few stuffed animals was about it. But then he was a baby and babies did not need much I reasoned. I also set about buying things for him. Of course there was birthdays and Christmas but in between times too if I saw something I thought he’d like I get it for him.
Once his brother came along, we were well stocked. But still we kept on buying more. And receiving more. And more.
Now I feel like we have reached saturation (I’m sure my kids would not agree!). To keep things from getting too overcrowded I now rotate the toys each month so that not all of them are on display or accessible at once. This helps revitalise their interest in them as well as keeping our home from looking like a discount toy outlet. When I change the toys over it is always interesting to watch my children actually playing with them and rediscovering old games and inventing new ones instead of just walking over them. You can even wrap some of them if they’re young and enjoy the excitement of ripping off wrapping paper.
I also do a similar exercise with books. We’ve some of those storage bins on castors and I divided the books (we have a lot!) into equal piles, put a pile in each storage bin and then numbered the outside so I would know what order to rotate them.
If you have a tent or dress up clothes make sure you rotate these too. We tried having a play tent permanently up but after a while the boys stopped ’seeing’ it. But if I take it down and then after a month or two put if back up, they do ’see’ it and come up with lots of play scenarios to care about.
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译文:
你的孩子拥有很多的玩具吗？
我记得在我的孩子七岁的时候，我觉得一个小孩几乎没有什么玩具，只有几个填充动物，那是件有点伤感，也有点难堪的事情。但那时他只是个小孩，我推断小孩子们是不需要太多的玩具的。我也开始买些东西给他。当然在生日和圣诞时，但是在其间，如果我看到什么我认为他会喜欢的东西时，我也会买给他。
当他的弟弟到来时，我们都已经贮备很多玩具了。但是我们还是继续买更多的玩具，也收到更多的玩具，更多的。
现在我感觉我们已经达到饱合了（我确信我的孩子们不会同意！）。为了使东西不过度拥挤，我现在每月轮换这些玩具，以使不是所有的玩具都摆放出来或马上就可以拿得到。这样做可以帮助他们再生对玩具的兴趣，同时也免得使我们家看起来像一个打折玩具店。当我轮换这些玩具时，看着我的孩子们竟然玩着这些玩具，他们重新发现旧游戏，又发明新游戏而不是仅仅从这些玩具旁边经过，这可真有趣啊。如果他们很小，喜欢拆开包装纸时的兴奋，你甚至可以把这些玩具中的一部分包装起来。
我也把书做了同样的处理。我们有一些带脚轮的贮藏箱，我把这些书（我们有太多的书了）分成相等的堆，每一堆都放入贮藏箱，这样我就知道以什么样的顺序来轮换这些书了。
如果你有帐篷或者礼服，也一定要轮换它们。我们尝曾试着把这个帐篷支起来长期地玩，不过没多久后，孩子们就“看不见”它了。但是如果我把它收起来，然后过一两个月再把它支起来，孩子们就能“看见”它，然后又编出很多电视剧情来玩。
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