Toy Rotations

Dear Elena,

You came to this world during a fascinating, overwhelming, and sometimes senseless era of information overload. As soon as I uttered the words I’m pregnant close enough to my phone, I became the target of all kinds of pushed advertisements and Instagram accounts with infinite suggestions.

Many of those suggestions rang some preschool background bells, and others made me very curious. Others were just “mom-shaming” silent triggers—something along the lines of, “If you don’t get this, I question your parenting.” I’ll tell you more about all that when you become a mom.

The one trend trusted accounts posted about, and I couldn’t wait to try with you, was toy rotation. The idea is to have a small selection of toys available and the rest in a closet to be rotated every few weeks or months, depending on how you engage with them.

You are currently 18 months old, and one might say you have a decent amount of toys and a not-so-decent/this-feels-like-a-library amount of books. I agree, you have way too many books, and I wondered about doing a book rotation as well, but I just got a rotating bookshelf instead—call that a “just for Mama” kind of choice.

With your toys, however, doing a rotation felt like a necessity—not just for you. I have rotated your toys several times since you were old enough to play with them, and each time, I asked myself these questions:

• What are you gravitating towards?
• What toys offer multiple ways of using them?
• What toys are fun for language development?
• Which one have you not seen n in a long time?

For every rotation, I find success with some and not others. Those I bring out and spark zero interest go back in the closet. Maybe they need to cook in there a bit longer, which is what happened with most of your young infant toys. You weren’t sure what to do with them, so they were just there on the shelves watching you pick books instead.

Recently, though, your dad and I have noticed you rediscover a toy you hadn’t seen in months, like it’s brand new in your eyes. I draw parallels between how you’d engage with it before and how you use it now. The other day, for example, I brought out a ring stacker you hadn’t used since April. When we first got it, you only wanted to watch me place each ring. This time, you took charge and began experimenting with the order of rings being stacked.

I’ve witnessed the same evolution with the coin box, the puzzles, and the stacking cups. You now see the possibilities and work on your tolerance when something becomes too hard. The teacher in me geeks out at your evolution with those toys and the connections I draw between your present and where you started.

But that will be an idea to write about more later this week; for now, I will leave you with this message: most people say, “Never look back,” but we don’t know how far we’ve come until we look back and see where it all began. I hope you do that.

Love,

Mama