The Best Toys...

The best toys are...no toys! When left to his own devices, my son, Josh, will turn anything into a train!

Now, what do I mean by "anything"? Well, he has dragged around a piece of toilet paper on the floor and called it a train (my personal favorite); he has lined up our laundry baskets to create a train to ride in; he has lined up chairs and boxes in the house to make long trains; he has lined up juice boxes to form a train; he has coupled up scraps of paper to form trains; he has used his pillows as trains; he has scrunched up blankets on the bed and sat inside to drive a train; he has dug lines in the dirt in the backyard to make train tracks; he has used his spoon and fork as trains; he has made trains out of play-doh.  His first drawing consisted of train tracks and, later on, he drew a train! He even scoots or shuffles his feet through the wood chips at the park to create two lines in the form of, yup, you guessed it, train tracks! 


(And you thought I was kidding when I said Josh was obsessed with trains?)


I remember one of my high school teachers saying that it's good to be bored. It lets your mind expand. It allows you a moment, or two, or three just to exhale and think of something new or think of nothing at all. In some ways, being bored is like letting your imagination breathe. I am all for giving toys to kids and seeing them enjoy them, but sometimes, it's just as amazing to watch them play with "nothing" and see what happens with their imaginations...