Lax Toddler Parenting #4: The Cardboard Box Edition

Now, obviously I’m a big advocate of toys, what with making my living selling them, but I’m the first to admit that a REALLY good cardboard box can hardly be beaten for sheer value. There are masses of post on this blog, I’m sure, of pictures of the girls in the olden days when stock used to be delivered to the house and they’d spend happy hours making dens, castles, boats and entire worlds from the huge boxes that it arrived in. Only Josie doesn’t remember doing this so when she asked for a box for a project the other week, I happily obliged. Some careful cutting, crafting, additions of paper plates and some MakeDo bits and sellotape later and she had a wonderful few days transporting her Rubens Barn dolls to nursery and back and deeply involved in a pretend game that she barely emerged from even for meals.

And when she was done…

… Bene took over.

I loved that he got to play in something that his sister had created and that she happily handed on when she was done. I loved that he ‘got’ that it was a car and had fun looking in the boot, and stepping in and out of the doors. I loved that he carefully put his Max doll in the back and pushed it up and down the hall. And most of all, even though really great toys are an amazing thing, I love that my little baby boy of the 21st century, surrounded by gadgets and media and all those toys his parents indulge him in, still just loved playing with a cardboard box for hours.

The lax bit is that I got to do some blogging while he did of course – and didn’t feel guilty for not interacting properly 😆

Plus it reminded me of making this video with the girls for a review, a shameless piece of slave labour for the good of the business; )