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The past few weeks, when I go running, I stop midway and let Maya down from the stroller. Part of it is because I make the first part of my run so fast that I’m winded at the 3.5 mile mark (I run those miles at a 7 minutes/mile pace). The other part is that I let Maya down one day because I was tired for some other reason and since then, she insists on being let down. To run those miles non-stop, I try a different route.

At the 3.5 mile mark, we’re at the edge of the Shoreline marshlands. This close to the bay, Stevens creek is rarely dry, even in summer. I usually lead Maya away from the main track and onto a dirt track that parallels the paved track, but is broken up in places by the creek bed. Some sections are a little steep as they head down closer to the creek. The loose gravel and the descent makes things a little slippery for a 20 month baby. In the beginning, Maya took little steps, bending down the moment she her grip slipped, holding her arms out to balance herself. But, she didn’t want any help as she descended or ascended the path. Only sometimes did she reach out for my hand. Last week, the path was still muddy from the storm of the past week, but Maya went down like a pro, hardly slowing down and continuing to look around as she walked instead of being focused on taking the next step.

As the track levels out, it is quite close to the creek, though the creek is still hidden by the undergrowth in places. I take Maya closer to the water, especially when there are mallards and teals. Maya watches them fascinated. They waddle in the water, a little wary of the sudden interest so close. Maya says “quack, quack” pointing at them. They sometimes fly away from this attention. Sometimes, they put on a show for her. They dip their beaks in the water, to catch some food, becoming almost perpendicular to the liquid plane, their tails pointing straight up at the sky. Sometimes, they quack at each other. A couple of times, they flew in, using their feet to break their fall, making a big, splashing sound. Maya is enthralled.

If it isn’t the ducks, Maya is fascinated by the dead leaves that carpet the path in places. I can’t name most of the plants they belong to. But, Maya knows the word leaf. She points at them as she walks, picking one or two up for a closer examination. She usually selects one or two to carry back to the stroller. Most leaves are dry and brown, but some are still green. Maya examines them all closely, looking at me as she does so, asking me to explain them or name them. I say leaf and yeleh (leaf in Kannada).

This past Thursday, a crane and an egret were resting in the shallow creek. The crane was still on the bank, a little distance away. The white crane looks so beautiful and fragile, with its reedy legs. Maya can hardly contain her excitement after the initial surprise. She breaks into a run to get closer. I ask her to stop a little distance from the bird, to not scare it away. She heeds my message only for a moment or two. Seeing her too close, the crane spreads its wings and majestically glides a little distance away.

Maya’s also drawn to rocks and pebbles. She picks them up and examines them closely, her eyes gleaming. I tell her that we cannot take them with us and she reluctantly drops them back. She then reaches for the trees and massages her hand against the bark, feeling their texture.

These are Maya’s toys. Pebbles, leaves, sand, kitchen utensils. I dramatize. She does have a few of the more mainstream toys (mostly hand-me-downs) and a few puzzles.

Juliet Schor writes in “Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture” that a typical first-grader in the US can identify 200 brand names, accumulates toys at an average rate of seventy new toys per year, and spends an average of two hours in front of a TV per day. In 2002, children between the ages of 4-12 spent $30 billion of which toys were the number two spending category (sweets, beverages and snacks was the numero uno).

This is the the age of smart toys and edu-toys. When I was growing up, toys were meant for play, not to train (or educate as we like to say) or be smart. Living in the age of anxiety and dog-eat-dog, no instruction can start early enough. 62% of parents surveyed by the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2004 said that educational toys are very important to children’s intellectual development. The anxiety has gotten so out of whack that there are toys such as those made by BabyPlus, which allow a pregnant woman to strap a device to her belly, twice a day, that then proceeds to produce sounds that are supposed to make for smarter babies right out of the womb. In the movie, Baby Mama, Tina Fey’s character wants the surrogate mother to listen to Mandarin tapes, based on the idea that learning a second language helps babies get smarter.

A Fisher-Price advertisement says: “We all want to be parents of the next Einstein” and markets their toys on the mantra that “the right toy at the right time will enrich the play experience of your little genius”. Another toy maker, Neurosmith, says that their toys “..stimulate key areas of the brain and actually help teach your child how to learn”. And parents are lapping these messages up. LeapFrog, a major educational toy vendor, alone notched $640 million in sales in 2004, according to Pamela Paul, author of the incisive “Parenting Inc.”. Baby Einstein, which dominates the baby media market has sales of $200 million annually. $200 million. Just for baby CDs and DVDs. According to a 2003 study, a third of all American babies from 6 months to 2 years old had at least one “Baby Einstein” video.

Are these educational toys “educational” or helpful or are they turning kids into passive consumers who demand that the world entertain them at the press of a button, rather than entertain themselves. Pamela Paul writes: “Many toys on the market today may as well have a sticker on them that says “Imagination Not Included”". She says that these toy manufacturers and parents are misguided in their understanding of “interactive” toys: it is the children that must interact with the toys and not the other way. She tells the story of a kid who asked “What does it do ?” when given an old-fashioned toy, puzzled that play didn’t involve pushing a button. She quotes my favorite pediatric anthropologist, Meredith Small, who fears that we’re either overstimulating our babies or stimulating them in wrong ways. Research supports her concerns.

• A Harvard researcher, Chuck Nelson, who monitored what goes on inside infant brains, says that babies filter out a lot of what the toy is putting out, that they’re not like a sponge, absorbing everything.

• Elizabeth Spelke, a famous developmental cognitive scientist says that her studies have found that attempting to teach infants things such as learning to read or count is useless at best, but possibly harmful. We evolved to learn about the world from real people, not the TV or DVD. Patricia Kuhl, a leading expert on child development especially w.r.t language conducted a study in which a native Mandarin speaker played for an hour with one group of babies. Three other control groups of babies were setup: one watched a video of the native Mandarin speaker playing with the babies, one heard an audio recording of the native Mandarin speaker speaking and the third group had no exposure to Mandarin at all. Of these, Dr. Kuhl found that only the group that only the first group of babies (with the live Mandarin speaker) tested as being capable of distinguishing Mandarin sounds from English.

• Andrew Meltzoff, a co-author of the excellent “Scientist In The Crib”, says that his research has found that a key to language development is the baby’s ability to read the mother’s face, her reaction to various events and actions by the baby. These so-called interactive dolls/toys have an unchanging expression, no matter what the baby does. Another researcher, Catherine Tamis-LaMonda, concludes similarly based on her research with parent-baby interaction in “naturalistic” environments.

• Laura Schulz, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT says that once children understand the causal relationship of a toy, they move on (pressing a button produces one of these six sounds). She says that children with these smart toys become passive absorbers and even develop impatience.

• Alison Gopnik, another prominent developmental cognitive scientist, wrote an op-ed piece in NYT in which she says: “The learning that babies and young children do on their own, when they carefully watch an unexpected outcome and draw new conclusions from it, ceaselessly manipulate a new toy or imagine different ways that the world might be, is very different from schoolwork. Babies and young children can learn about the world around them through all sorts of real-world objects and safe replicas, from dolls to cardboard boxes to mixing bowls, and even toy cellphones and computers. Babies can learn a great deal just by exploring the ways bowls fit together or by imitating a parent talking on the phone. (Imagine how much money we can save on “enriching” toys and DVDs!)”. She writes that kids younger than five have a hard time being goal-oriented which is what so many of the so-called educational toys attempt to do.

On Sunday, NYT reported that Disney is offering refunds to parents who bought the Baby Einstein products, admitting that they did not produce the geniuses they promised.

All these so-called educational toys cost so much more than the old-fashioned ones. What’s worse in the modern world is that with the outsourcing of much of the manufacturing to China, parents are subject to the yearly scare of recalls because many of the toys are toxic. To avoid this, well heeled parents have begun to search for toys not made in China, hand-crafted toys, which are more expensive. No wonder a modern family cannot be supported on a single income. Worse still of course is the lack of time that parents have with their children. An absence that fuels the guilt that causes them to indulge in all these expensive toys. The executive VP of Chicco toy division explains the success of his division:
“My viewpoint is that with so many dual working parents, the guilt factor steps in. They’re looking for toys that make them feel good. They think, if I’m not around enough, something can fill in that void for me, maybe if the toy teaches them something.”

What does help babies ? In the article on Baby Einstein, Vicky Rideout, the VP of the Kaiser Family Foundation says: “To me, the most important thing is reminding parents that getting down on the floor to play with children is the most educational thing they can do.”. Alison Gopnik writes: “But what children observe most closely, explore most obsessively and imagine most vividly are the people around them. There are no perfect toys; there is no magic formula. Parents and other caregivers teach young children by paying attention and interacting with them naturally and, most of all, by just allowing them to play.”

This is what my parents and many parents of my generation and older did. This is how we evolved. Surrounded by people from whom we learnt to make sense of the world.

Maya runs around the dirt track by the Stevens creek, stepping on dry twigs and leaves, relishing the crackling sound that it makes. Sunlight dapples in the creek. A plane flies by overhead and Maya points to it. “Bye Bye”, she says. She spots an acorn on the ground and picks it up. She can’t say acorn yet, but I’m guessing that the smile on her face and her pointing at it is an indication that she recognizes this from the pictures she’s seen in her books. To her, there’s a toy around every corner and the world is a playground.

To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour - William Blake, Auguries of Innocence