Miscellaneous

25 Mar 12

There are no toys here. I don’t know if I realized that until someone said something. The kids are creative with things like wire and tires and whatever else they find in the trash heaps. I gave my host mom some green tea and sugar cubes that came in a cardboard box as a gift for my first stay here. In less than six days the sugar ran out (they put so much sugar in tea and coffee!). Two of the youngest kids fought over the empty cardboard carton so that the mom gave the top part to one and the bottom part to the other and the satisfaction in their faces from half a blue sugar carton broke my heart a bit. It was a bit eye opening to say the least. Some of the older boys have at least one football (not the American football) but other than that I haven’t seen anything else that we’d legitimately call a toy back home.

I rolled a tire back and forth with the three year old once but as patient as I am, I just can’t keep that up as long as he can. But he and the four year old play with it still. And you know how you’ve probably seen kids holding a piece of wire to roll another circular piece of wire around on a dusty road in old movies or what-not? Yeah, they do that here. And it actually looks kind of fun... Anyway I wish I could have brought crayons and more footballs (soccer balls..) and Frisbees etc. But this also makes me reflect on the inordinate amount of toys that we shower our kids with back home.

As a former preschool teacher and longtime babysitter, I know those shiny colorful plastic things made in China don’t have a terribly long shelf life and they also aren’t great for tots as they put those plastic chemicals in their mouth more often than not (nor are they great for the planet, bla bla). The kids here also put plastic bags in their mouth. There must be something about plastic that is appetizing (in more than one sense of the word).

Anyway, as an objective observer it’s just an interesting notion to look at the two clashing approaches regarding toys. Here it’s not a matter of culture to not have toys as much as it’s a matter of money where feeding several mouths is more important than making sure they can busy themselves with a baby Einstein gidgymagoo. In the states though I know parents put a lot of their paychecks towards toys because they can, for one, but also, because so many parents can, I also feel like there is a social pressure to make sure Sally Woo has as much as Tommy Wan otherwise you look like a bad parent. At least that’s my speculation from some 6370 miles away (www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/distanceresult.html?p1=74&p2=81).

At the very least, like anything else, when faced with differences I think it’s important to question the difference and to take a look at what you know and what you’re used to and put that just as much under the microscope as the thing that’s different, because I’ll tell you what, these children here are very independent, self-sufficient, and extremely creative for their ages and lack of education. Save for the three year old, I also don’t hear whining or crying, like ever. My son is an extraordinary exception whining and crying a lot but still probably a lot less than the three year olds in my class when I was a teacher.

I’ll leave it at that for this toy talk and end with the TED talk below as a nice supplement for the blog but also to continue to support and encourage viewing TED talks as I find them to be hugely inspiring as well as lovely to watch.

Cheers to a brighter future!

http://www.ted.com/talks/arvind_gupta_turning_trash_into_toys_for_learning.html