How many toys?

I thought this discussion on the number of toys a child should have available was interesting:
https://www.today.com/parents/toddlers/how-many-toys-should-a-toddler-have-rcna200879
Spoiler - having too many toys means the child generally doesn't play with them, but moves onto another toy and another.

I think this isn't quite the same as a home situation, where the child will not feel pressure to explore all the possibilities in the same way (being familiar with their own toys) but may still be of use to someone.

In this study, they watched kids for 15 minutes. I wonder how different the results would be if their examination term had been three hours.

Like many such articles, they do not say where to find the original research.   They do give the name of the researcher, so I will try to hunt it down this evening. Too often important details get missed.   Though the findings, as presented, make sense.


Interesting, published 2018 in Infant Behavior and Development. As a general academic rule  (with exceptions) research over 5 years old is questionable. The published research seemed to focus on how many toys should be available for a toddler to play with at a given point in time ( as opposed to how many toys a child should own).   Sessions lasted up to 32 minutes by my count (generally 15).  I would think 32 would be  well over the expected attention span of a toddler.  Toy selection wise the groups were 4 toys and ( I think) 16.

This has more details, but it's only a teaser or press release or something from the university: https://news.utoledo.edu/index.php/12_18_2017/fewer-toys-lead-to-richer-play-experiences-ut-researchers-find (It seems kind of weird that it doesn't have a link to the actual study.)

So much depends on the child, on the toy, on the environment...

We tried to have most of our toys things like lego where the child could make what they wanted.

We also tried to have toys that were sturdy enough not to break.

We still have our bin of lego and a bin of Brio wooden train track. It's fun to watch adults sit down with kids and play with them!

Jay Angler wrote:We still have our bin of lego and a bin of Brio wooden train track. It's fun to watch adults sit down with kids and play with them!

It's nice to have a kid so you have an excuse to play....Looking forwards to great nephews and nieces now, all my sisters' kids are adults.


(I don't need an excuse, but lacking the kids therefore the toys)