Think back for a moment to your childhood. What was your favorite thing to play? What did you pretend for hours on end? When parents are asked this question, almost without exception we discover that our favorite play scenarios were those we created out of our imaginations. We were mommies feeding babies, superheroes with a towel-turned-cape, explorers of our backyards. Grandparents often say they played with what little play materials they had. A simple cloth was a baby blanket, a parachute flyer, and a costume all in one.

Today’s children have toys far more detailed and sophisticated. However, a growing number of psychologists and child development specialists are advocating for a return to the “natural” play of yesteryear. Why? Because it requires imagination.

In this age of high-tech toys, children frequently push a button and are entertained by watching play happen, not by actively creating it themselves. The toys construction determines how it will be played with. The natural play that is thought to be more appropriate encourages children to create a play scenario out of their own imagination. Play materials are unstructured so the child must creatively “complete” the toy. Play materials are also multi-purpose, meaning that one toy can be turned into lots of different things. For example, blocks made of tree branches can be used to create unique structures not possible with traditional square blocks. Cloths and silks can be turned into capes, aprons, and rivers. Dolls with simple features allow the child to decide if the baby is laughing, crying or sleeping.

Recent research is supporting this more natural approach to play. There is some evidence that children who play with open-ended toys are better at solving divergent problems (problems where there is more than one answer). These children were shown to think beyond the objects in what we call “out-of-the-box” thinking.1

Many parents who practice natural or holistic parenting are taking the lead in bringing back this type of play to childhood. More and more parents are seeing the value of and true developmental need for free creative play. Many parents are now choosing unstructured toys made of natural materials over battery-operated plastic toys. And with new books such as Einstein Never Used Flash Cards, many parents are questioning the push for early academics and are enrolling their children in play-based preschools.

So, again, think about your favorite memories of playing as a child. Who were you? What did you become? The imagination that transformed you into someone else or into another place has proven again to truly be a cornerstone of childhood. It seems that although we have the technology to create high-tech toys, it’s the natural play with natural play things that truly inspires the magic that is childhood.

About the Authors
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, PhD & Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, PhD, Einstein Never Used Flash Cards. (Rodale, 2003) 

Dana Johnson, MSW is a former children’s mental health therapist. She owns Three Sisters Toys specializing in natural, open-ended and Waldorf-inspired toys for children.

For a lot of couples, the question about whether to have another child isn’t really a question, it’s a given. For others, though, the issue is more complicated. And most of the problems have to do with exactly what you’re going through in your home: one spouse wants a second (or third) child while the other isn’t nearly as excited about the prospect. Unfortunately, there’s no easy solution to this problem.

The time crunch is a common concern of prospective second-time parents. But it’s usually not the only thing they’re worried about. So sit down and make a list of other factors as well. You might want to start with these:

• Finances. Can you really afford to have another baby? If you answer No, does not having enough money really make a difference for you?
• Your own childhood. Were you an only child or did you have brothers and sisters? How did you like growing up that way?
• Ability to love more than one child. Are you worried that you won’t be able to love your second child as much as the first one? While this is an incredibly common worry, the simple answer is that your capacity to love your children–no matter how many you have–is infinite.
• Labor and delivery. Are you worried about putting your partner through another painful pregnancy and labor? Since she’s the one going through it, leave that decision to her. Consider, though, that while being a parent is exhausting enough, trying to be a parent while you’re pregnant is something altogether different. Is that OK for your partner or not?
• Your firstborn. Do you have a child with a difficult temperament? If so, keep in mind that your next child’s temperament may not exactly mirror your firstborn’s.

When you’ve put your list together and had a chance to think through each of your concerns, schedule a time to talk them over with your wife. You’ll probably find that even though she’s more gung-ho than you are right now, she shares many of them with you.

About the Author
Armin Brott, hailed by Time as “the superdad’s superdad,” has written or co-written six critically acclaimed books on fatherhood, including the newly released second edition of Fathering Your Toddler: A Dad’s Guide to the Second and Third Years. His articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, American Baby, Parenting, Child, Men’s Health, The Washington Post among others. Armin is an experienced radio and TV guest, and has appeared on Today, CBS Overnight, Fox News, and Politically Incorrect. He’s the host of “Positive Parenting,” a weekly radio program in the San Francisco Bay Area. Visit Armin at www.mrdad.com.

As documented in numerous research studies, we know there is a great similarity between the type of baby we raise and the type of baby we were (unless some major changes occurred within us during our adulthood to change our view of relationships). Parents who were raised in an openly communicative and sensitive manner in their own families are more likely to have secure babies. Parents who were raised to dismiss their feelings and not to value attachments tend to have babies who are avoidant. Parents who were raised in an environment where there was a lot of negative emotion, particularly anger, are more likely to have babies who are clingy and dependent, and many of these parents continue to feel anger toward their own parents.

The following questions will help you see whether you fit into any of these three categories. A majority of “yes” answers in any group identifies your category.

Secure Child Memory

1. Were you the type of baby and young child who sought out a parent immediately when you needed some comfort?
2. Do you remember being happy?
3. Do you remember getting a lot of positive attention and caring?
4. Do you remember finding it easy to connect with others, including parents and friends?

Insecure/Avoidant Child Memory

1. Were you the type of baby and young child who did not go to a parent when you felt sad, angry, or hurt?
2. Were you the type of baby and young child who grew up feeling like a loner?
3. Did you not have very many people you could turn to, or did you just not turn to others? Were you basically self-reliant or too reliant on yourself, sometimes despite your best efforts to be more connected with others?
4. Do you remember making efforts at closeness with a parent and feeling rebuffed or just not getting the type of response you, had hoped for?
5. Do you not remember much about your childhood, as hard as you might try?
6. Do you remember not being liked very much by your peers, either because you were aggressive at times or because you were a loner?
7. Do you feel that much of this discussion about feelings is “mumbo-jumbo” or “psychobabble”? Is this what your parents might say or have said about such self-assessment?

Insecure/Dependent Child Memory

1. Do you recall being very close to one parent (or more) to the point of what we call “symbiosis” or oneness with that parent?
2. Do you remember being an easily distressed sort of baby or young child?
3. Do you remember being overprotected or catered to a lot?
4. Do you recall that you were a bit younger than your age (you might still feel that way) — not necessarily in terms of appearance, but more that people treated you as younger and didn’t give you enough of a chance at responsibility?
5. Did you constantly need people around you, maybe for approval?
6. Did you constantly try to please others to the exclusion of even being aware of what your own emotional needs were?
7. Did you “take care” of younger siblings or a parent so that it seemed as if you were the parent or the roles were reversed?

Whether we were secure, avoidant, or dependent as children (recall that insecure/disorganized children typically show one of the other insecure patterns as a “core”), as adults we are free to adopt new ways of creating relationships with our own children.

Your Own Family History
People bring all kinds of personal history into parenting — that’s not a problem. The problem arises when we don’t resolve those issues ourselves. Our own parents are often our only models of how to relate to children, so they usually have a powerful influence on us, no matter whether we want to emulate them or be completely different. As adults, we need to recognize the heritage we have brought with us from the family in which we ourselves were raised and to replicate what was good and eliminate what was not.

Social scientists Carol George, Nancy Kaplan, and Mary Main at the University of California, Berkeley, developed a state-of-the-art interview to assess parents’ family-of-origin experiences (called the Adult Attachment Interview). The interview is very detailed and enables the interviewer to obtain information about the parent’s experiences during childhood. It also does something quite tricky — it can help us understand beyond the childhood experiences of parents by going beyond the surface of what they report. In other words, we gain information on both what they say happened as well as some things they might not consciously remember.

Taken from Raising a Secure Child (Perigee Books; $15.95) by Zeynep Biringen. Copyright © 2004 Zeynep Biringen

About the Author:
Zeynep Biringen, Ph.D., is the foremost researcher on emotional availability in parent-child relationships. An associate professor at Colorado State University and a licensed child psychologist, she also maintains a private practice and consults for the courts and mental health professionals.

The following is an excerpt from the book Raising a Secure Child: Creating an Emotional Connection Between You and Your Child by Zeynep Biringen, Ph.D.
Published by Perigee; July 2004; $15.95US/$24.00CAN; 0-399-52994-2
Copyright © 2004 Zeynep Biringen