Your time only
Do you know what your child’s toys are up to when you’re not around? There’s one way to find out… ask your child to divulge their secret lives! Ask your child to tell you what a favorite stuffed animal, for example, does at night when the family is asleep. Perhaps the stuffed animals get together and play music that only stuffed animals can hear, cook food that only stuffed animals can smell, or call other stuffed animal friends up on the telephone. Your child might also reveal what board games do after they’ve been put away, what arcade games do once the computer has been powered down, what arts-and-crafts kits do in between work sessions, and so on. You might be especially intrigued to learn that cards don’t simply sit around and wait for you to shuffle them. On the contrary—they’d rather play 52-pickup all by themselves than wait around for humans to get a hankering for a round of Crazy 8s!
