This sounds like a really interesting idea, and it has a lot of potential. One of the major obstacle that I see is actually more psychological--sometimes toys aren't about the toy or playing with it. It's about, "It's mine." The culture spawning kids who spend more time indoors/alone also spawns individualistic competitors who don't know how to share, don't want to share, don't want to play with someone else's toys, they want their own.
I think even parents might reinforce that if they get stuck into the loop of, "My kids have to have this, they deserve their own toys just to prove we're not broke," which is something that my Mom did. She spent a lot of money on toys that she didn't have so that I wouldn't feel inferior to the other kids at school who had money.
This mind set is also built up by the marketing and advertising, which uses (among other things) trance techniques to pressure us into buying things. Because, we're broke and unworthy if we're not buying things, right? Because the neighbors will think less of me if I don't have a brand new couch. Because my coworkers will look down on me if I can't afford new toys for my kids.
I think what you're talking about doing has the potential to build kids who can share, and kids who can collaborate and play together, but I think that part of what you may need to do is not even about buying the toys and making the space available, but showing the value in this and convincing parents that our culture of waste is not serving their kids.
I can say, I've been trying to reduce my consumption for the past 5-6 years. Mostly what has helped has been having no income for anything but food or necessities. It's not that I don't lust after that $4 coffee or those new clothes or those techie toys or that new phone. I do. But I also recognize that I can shop at Goodwill for clothes, get good clothes, and that they don't have to be "new" to be "good." I know that I shouldn't drink the $4 coffee because the sugar's bad for me anyways. The techie toys--well, maybe some day I'll get an iphone, but that day is not today.
I suppose where I'm going with that is, I have "I want my own thing" as much as anyone else in our culture. I want new clothes, I want a new computer not a used one. I want a computer that's mine, not one that I borrow.
And as a kid, if anyone else would have touched my favorite stuffed animals, I might have, you know, bitten their face off. Then again, one of the reasons I spent a lot of time alone as opposed to playing with neighborhood kids is that they were so mean to me. It wasn't safe to be around them. And that may be another challenge for your organization--that thing kids do where they socially ostracize each other.
Now, if your neighborhood family space could find some way to address *that* dynamic, that would really be something. Maybe something would shift if the kids were doing some kind of neighborhood/collaborative projects together, and each kid was shown to have value to the project in different ways. I have no idea what would shift the dynamic of rejection, only that I would never have wanted to hang out at a neighborhood space where kids from school were, because home was my refuge from the teasing and abuse.
I think you could help to overcome a lot of challenges, but you definitely have a lot of mindsets to shift in doing this, and I wish you the best with it!
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 06:07 am (UTC)I think even parents might reinforce that if they get stuck into the loop of, "My kids have to have this, they deserve their own toys just to prove we're not broke," which is something that my Mom did. She spent a lot of money on toys that she didn't have so that I wouldn't feel inferior to the other kids at school who had money.
This mind set is also built up by the marketing and advertising, which uses (among other things) trance techniques to pressure us into buying things. Because, we're broke and unworthy if we're not buying things, right? Because the neighbors will think less of me if I don't have a brand new couch. Because my coworkers will look down on me if I can't afford new toys for my kids.
I think what you're talking about doing has the potential to build kids who can share, and kids who can collaborate and play together, but I think that part of what you may need to do is not even about buying the toys and making the space available, but showing the value in this and convincing parents that our culture of waste is not serving their kids.
I can say, I've been trying to reduce my consumption for the past 5-6 years. Mostly what has helped has been having no income for anything but food or necessities. It's not that I don't lust after that $4 coffee or those new clothes or those techie toys or that new phone. I do. But I also recognize that I can shop at Goodwill for clothes, get good clothes, and that they don't have to be "new" to be "good." I know that I shouldn't drink the $4 coffee because the sugar's bad for me anyways. The techie toys--well, maybe some day I'll get an iphone, but that day is not today.
I suppose where I'm going with that is, I have "I want my own thing" as much as anyone else in our culture. I want new clothes, I want a new computer not a used one. I want a computer that's mine, not one that I borrow.
And as a kid, if anyone else would have touched my favorite stuffed animals, I might have, you know, bitten their face off. Then again, one of the reasons I spent a lot of time alone as opposed to playing with neighborhood kids is that they were so mean to me. It wasn't safe to be around them. And that may be another challenge for your organization--that thing kids do where they socially ostracize each other.
Now, if your neighborhood family space could find some way to address *that* dynamic, that would really be something. Maybe something would shift if the kids were doing some kind of neighborhood/collaborative projects together, and each kid was shown to have value to the project in different ways. I have no idea what would shift the dynamic of rejection, only that I would never have wanted to hang out at a neighborhood space where kids from school were, because home was my refuge from the teasing and abuse.
I think you could help to overcome a lot of challenges, but you definitely have a lot of mindsets to shift in doing this, and I wish you the best with it!