In the midst of all that is working against children and imaginative play these days, there is an active organization called TRUCE (Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children’s Entertainment). TRUCE has been around for years and has produced a number of valuable resource guides for parents and teachers. TRUCE is raising awareness about the negative effects of violent and stereotyped toys and the unhealthy impact that media has had on children’s creative play. Check out their Toy, Play & Young Children Action Guide at http://truceteachers.org/toyguides/T_Guide_web_08.pdf
This guide is FREE to download, copy and distribute. That’s right, FREE! The guide helps explain the importance of play, provides guidelines for choosing toys of value and toys to avoid. There are ideas for making alternative gifts for children (instead of purchasing manufactured gifts) and even a great recipe for good old-fashioned play dough. The guide helps parents make sense of many of the false media claims that make decision making so difficult. For example, did you know that Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby type videos do NOT help babies acquire language. There is actually evidence that babies who watch these videos have LESS language than those babies who don’t watch.
In the current climate of ceaseless marketing that takes advantage of young children, it is refreshing to know that a group such as TRUCE is working just as hard to protect children.
See their great work at http://www.truceteachers.org/