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How Your Baby Toys Shaped Your Adulthood
A couple of weeks ago, my niece turned two. Maybe I’m just inexperienced at these things, but I wasn’t exactly sure what to buy a toddler. She’s old enough to tinker with baby toys, but not quite old enough to have preferences about them. She’ll drool and laugh at anything you hand her.
Somewhere in the midst of my gift-buying dilemma, my mother talked me into going halfsies on a tiny, wooden play mixer. Apparently, my niece’s present from her parents was going to be one of those big Melissa and Doug play kitchens, and they requested that any other gifts complement theirs.
Which, don’t get me wrong, the play kitchen was a nice gift, and my niece seemed to love it (if her nonstop squealing is anything to go by), but it does make me wonder: why the kitchen specifically?
My niece only knows one word (it’s “puppy”) so it’s not as if she asked for the kitchen. Her hobbies include eating blueberries and throwing tantrums. She has no interest in cooking — at least not yet.
One scroll through the Melissa and Doug website and I see a multitude of toys to play with — there’s a firetruck, a tool belt, a drum set, and an animal care center. Had she been a boy, I have a gut feeling she would…
