Get out of the nursery, monster!

The ceremony of presenting the award "Toy of the Year - "Child psychologists recommend" took place in Moscow

A toy can be dangerous for a baby, even when its manufacturing technology is flawless. It can threaten not physical, but mental health. This is no less scary than poisonous chemical paints. There is a collection of harmful products...

A toy can be dangerous for a baby, even when its manufacturing technology is flawless. It can threaten not physical, but mental health. This is no less scary than poisonous chemical paints.

There is a collection of harmful products in a small museum of the Moscow City Center for Psychological and Pedagogical Expertise of Games and Toys of the Moscow State University of Psychology and Education (the award ceremony was held at this university). Here, like predators in a zoo, there are all kinds of monsters with rolling red eyes, monsters frozen in an evil grin, babies with a sallow complexion and huge puppet heads - for some reason without torsos. Honestly, I'll tell you, it's just trash, a thriller. True, a very cute duckling also got here ...

- What is it to them for? I asked the head of the Center, Elena Smirnova.

“Because he makes the very process of children's play impossible,” she explained. - You see, there are buttons on it, press it, and it will start moving, jerking, squeaking, screaming, making some crazy sounds. His activity paralyzes the activity of the child, makes the game impossible.

- Is it that all moving and talking toys are harmful?

Instead of answering, the psychologist put a bull toy on the table. She pressed the button and a touching spectacle began: the bull went, but swaying so much that involuntarily I wanted to support him, protect him from falling ...

This, according to the expert, is a good toy, and the point is not at all whether it is automated or not.

“A good toy not only develops and supports the child’s imagination, but also sets a certain plot, allowing him to express himself in active action,” Vladimir SOBKIN, academician of the Russian Academy of Education, director of the Institute of the Sociology of Education, said a little later at the award ceremony here.

But I’m already getting ahead of myself, and for now we are discussing “bad” toys with Elena Smirnova. And she does not spare me: she turns on a game called "Doctor". The player must use tweezers to pull the insides out of a sick little man. The psychologist in the role of a baby “doctor” pulls out the liver, heart, kidneys, simultaneously explaining to me that the main condition of the game is to do everything very carefully so as not to wake the patient. Just at that moment, having seized the spleen with tweezers, she nevertheless disturbed this unfortunate one with a careless movement. He woke up and there was an explosion. True, there was a sharp noise, and everything around seemed to be torn apart. Well, it broke, that's for sure.

The game, as it turned out, is recommended for the development of motor skills of preschoolers! And it also turned out that the toy market is simply flooded with similar games for the smallest ones: there is a “bloody killer” game set, where a person is cut to pieces. There is a game with a telling name "Collect a friend Artem by the bones" ...

- We are generally against the dismemberment of the human body, it is impossible to teach anatomy to preschoolers at the expense of psychological losses. Here, for example, a severed head, how to play it? What plot of the game can the child build? Or these gloomy monsters in the nursery - this is unacceptable. Subconsciously, young children liken themselves to the toys with which they play, try on images for themselves. And there are also bad consequences if the game is reduced to some kind of manipulation: if you press a button, the robot goes, the bird quacks, etc. This may be normal for a two-year-old, but not for a 4-5-year-old. Stupidly pressing the buttons is not a game, the baby turns into a prefix for a toy, says Elena Smirnova.

And he tells me about the situation in the modern market of children's goods. The assortment here is growing rapidly: corporations, concerns, syndicates specialize in the production of toys. But this market for the most part does not meet the needs of children's play, it violates the objective laws of the development of the child's psyche. It is very difficult to find good toys in the mass production of all kinds of monsters that develop the soul of the child, his creative imagination, creativity. And one of the missions of the Center for Expertise of Toys, it turns out, is precisely to find and draw attention to them with their “Child psychologists recommend” sign.

A sign of the psychological safety of the toy and its developing qualities. This sign, according to Vitaly RUBTSOV, rector of the Moscow State Pedagogical University, who opened the ceremony of awarding the best toys of the year, is more and more guided by specialists and parents. In the seven years of its existence, the center has gained significant prestige.

- It is very important that psychologists are engaged in the examination of toys. Such control by specialists in the field of childhood, who single out and recommend the best samples, can be more effective than state control through laws and prohibitions, - said Alexander ADAMSKI, President of the Association of Pedagogy of Cooperation, who spoke here.

Among the toys that received the quality mark of the Center of Expertise is the Baby Doll (manufactured by Madeleine, nomination "Best Doll"). It is soft, cozy, you can wrap it in a blanket, take it in your arms and rock it. According to the center's specialists, this whole gamut of experiences cannot be achieved with dolls like Barbie - there the doll dictates to 5-6-year-old girls how "cool" they should be, and the girls are drawn, experiencing the suffering of models that is not childish at all.

The Red Horse, the center's quality mark, was also awarded to the game "Knight's Castle" (produced by ELC, nomination "Director's Game"). Psychologists recommend it, because there is everything for an infinite number of very different subjects. Castles, streets, roads, little men. Being engaged in this game, the child will experience, invent, act. He will independently build his ideas, solve his problems - all this, of course, is development.

“I now understand how important and complex the subject of toys is and how difficult it is to create them. Looking at really good toys, you understand that simplicity and versatility are inextricably linked in them - the simpler they are, the more versatile, - said Isaak Kalina, Minister of Education of Moscow, at the award ceremony. He presented an award to the manufacturers of the Dolphin Pyramid game (produced by the Bilanik company, nomination "The most versatile toy").

This game is enjoyed by children from the age of three. Smooth figurines made of pear wood make up a fairly large family of dolphins. They can be stacked on top of each other in different ways - the assembly options are endless, as well as the storylines.

For some reason, I myself really wanted to play these dolphins ...

At the awards ceremony, a presentation of a catalog of toys recommended by psychologists took place - there were a good hundred of them. The catalog can be seen on the center's website ( http://www.psytoys.ru ).