Babies Revolt Against Toys

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The giant toy chain filed for bankruptcy in 2017. Babies will rather play with
humans but we need to work, to buy them more toys. Sorry, digital toys.

Babies of the world are taking back their baby-dom, if I may put it like that. No toys please. We want to play with human beings so that we can touch their faces and look at those things they wear for reading.

Impossible you say?  It’s possible, judging from Tik Tok and YouTube Shorts. The most popular videos are the ones with kids playing with adults. I once saw a little boy doing a choreographed dance with lines of women. He didn’t miss a step. There’s also a video of a little boy who loves playing with his grandfather so much, he refuses to go back home when his mother comes to pick him up. Alianna dubbed ‘I’m baby girl’ is another popular video because she’s always playing with her father.

Maybe you are right. It will be impossible to have a world without toys, because very few kids have full-time parents, in cities. Dad has to work, mom has to work. It’s only in rural areas where kids don’t have plastic toys because they play with adults all the time: learning how make canoes, snow shoes, taking care of animals, put seeds in the ground, fish, ride donkeys and horses, learn how to read clouds for rain and how to skin a chicken. It’s not playing. It’s education for a particular way of life, determined by the environment.

Family gatherings are great because of sweet and crazy family members. And food. They are also a joy because babies cannot speak, but they have a lot of questions in their eyes. Who are these people? They get tired and sleep in some warm arms. Mothers suppress the tears because they know plastic toys do not help them go to sleep. Sleeping in the parents’ bed does.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.

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