Were your toys age-appropriate?

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Exactly. Though I don't sleep with a stuffed animal (my girlfriend fulfills that function)

How do I cut out a message?

Last edited by Jensen on 10 May 2013, 5:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

No, I never loved to amuse myself with certain toys just because they spun. And I didn't play with any toys as a teenager, period. Well, sometimes I did if my little cousins came round, but I played alongside them. When they weren't there, I didn't play with toys at all.

I played with all sorts of toys, to my mother's disapproval, including toys meant for both sexes. And I still played with toys in junior high. I think the Lion King came out when I was in 7th grade and I wanted all the toys. I still have my stuffed Simba. The toys I play with now are mostly adult toys like computers and gadgets, but I still sleep with a stuffed animal and play with Legos. I'm 32 next month.

I always thought I'd never get a date b/c of this, but my ex thought it was cute. He was pretty awesome and remarkable, though.

I've had stuff toys all my life, and I've pretty much played with them more than anything else.
Other than that I've had action figures, Lego, train tracks till I was 9 or 10
I am 18 now and I still have stuff toys lying all over the place

This sounds like me. I was really interested in classic literature (and classic children's literature) as a child and while other girls my age were reading the Sweet Valley High books, I was reading Dickens and Alice in Wonderland. When I was about eleven, I was introduced to epic fantasy. I don't think I always understood some of the classics I read (I read Moby Dick when I was ten) because I took everything very literally, but books like Tad Williams's Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series were never a problem.

As for other interests, I still played with toys long after my friends had stopped (well into my teens), and I still have hundreds of stuffed animals, several of which I sleep with, and they all have names and personalities (and occupations). I could very, very easily get obsessed with collecting Sylvanian Families if I had enough room in my house.

I started to read Moby Dick when I was 9. Actually it was a condensed version. My mother subscribed to Readers Digest condensed books. But when she found me reading it, she took it away from me. She told me I wasn't old enough to understand it. I was very upset over that and so she went out and bought me two children's books, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch and A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. I liked those books a lot and read them over on over, but I would rather have finished reading Moby Dick.

oops! double post.

Last edited by Marybird on 11 May 2013, 8:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I've played with age-inappropriate toys before (goota love them spinning tops, amirite?)

Still get a kick out of stuff like that, especially with Tinkertoys.

I don't remember playing with any toys. Given the choice I always chose books.

I did used to put a small ornament on my mum's record player turntable and watch it go round at different speeds at some length.

I also loved my bicycle and roller boots but they are not really toys as much as aids to freedom. Though putting my bike upside down and spinning the back wheel round and round was pretty cool .

I suppose not?

My mom's boyfriend talked and yelled about my playing habits a lot when I was 11-12 years old. Always ranting about how "she plays with figures in her room again, that's not normal" and "she is 12 years old and she sits there in her room playing with some figures (and then asking my mom if she thinks that's normal)".

At 11, I had just started playing with animal figures and those animals that I built from Lego.

Basically, what he called abnormal and what he tried to prevent me from doing when we we home alone was a perfectly normal step in social development. I did social play. Sort of.

Sure, kids usually do that waaaay in their early childhood and they're more flexible and creative and imitative but that was the first time that I did something similar.

I often built an environment of Lego or of my wooden train tracks. I'd done that before already and building tracks was my favourite activity all throughout elementary school.

I'd received a complete set of trains and tracks sometime before I entered school but I wasn't home a lot until I entered secondary school. Playing with the tracks was a rare occasion but one I always happily agreed to.

Anyway, what was new at around age 12 was the social play.

I gave my Lego foxes names from a TV cartoon about animals and placed them together according to their relations in the cartoon. I always made sure to line up my lion figures together because they happened to be a lioness and cubs and I thought to myself that they were family. I had several dog figures and later on even pretended that one dog I pretended was female and another dog that I pretended was male were "a couple" who "kissed". I pretended that there was another dog who treated them and was trying to kill them. I had a set of really snugly fur horses too. They bit each other and went on tournaments.

Really, that by itself isn't abnormal.

All of that was about social relationships (albeit my understanding of social stuff was most likely on a level of a much younger child) which I'd not done before.

But still, that guy, others in the family, my classmates and some of their parents and those of my teachers who had been told by that guy went nuts about that I played with Lego and my trains.

Some of my toys vanished and others were taken away in front of me. Even my swings were packed up during that time because that idiot guy had declared swinging at my age as ret*d.

Then, my beloved wooden toy train tracks and trains were sold too. That really hit me hard because I had spent 7 years or so playing with them whenver I had the chance of which the first 2 and last 2/3 I had set them up in my room on a daily basis!

I didn't play with toys much after that. I hadn't been left with a lot and if I was I was found to build stuff with Lego or to play with figures by any other person besides my mom, they yelled and tried to take the figures from me (which only worked once because I knew to bite hard after they crushed my Lego foxes while trying to pry them from my hands).

Sora, I had wooden toy train tracks and a wodden train as well, it was one circle.
My father builded up a whole model railway system for my brother on the attick (Märklin, 3m x 2m with additional 60cm added at the left side).
I had a spot where I could watch the train come out of the tunnel, I enjoyed it a lot.
I would like to have back a swing.
If I will ever have a garden I wish to have a swing.
Last year I was on a swing, when with Eastern the family went to a playground.

I feel so awful for you Sora, my step mom did much the same thing to me saying I was to old for most things I played with or collected, she let my toddler half brothers pretty much destroy my electric HO scale train set, claimed I was too old for my slot car track and never used it even when I had just used it the other day, took down all my room decor and gave it away or yard saled(or rather attemped to in some cases) meny of my toys/entertainment without concent that I had wondered where they went, she would have kept the money aswell, my lego and that was mixed in with my brothers. I don't spend much time at that house anymore, its not much fun and theres not much there that makes me feel like its one of my homes.

Eloa, I loved watching my train navigate the tracks I built, i'd get on the ground so I was at eye level with the trainset that was about 2 feet off the ground and just find different ways to watch it appear and come at me. I had one real high quality engine, an athern SD40-2 in Chessie System colors, I loved it becouse the EMD's were my faverate locomotives next to the old ALCOs and the Chessie System logo was a domestic cat. That engine had alot of power and traction so I would try to orginize a long train in such a way that it would go all the way around the board. This stuff just fasinated me for some reason.

I will have to clear some space and get that stuff back out and build another layout.

My parents frequently ignored the age things on building sets, and bought me complicated ones for Christmas frequently. Many of them were intended for older kids.

I still take the big bins of Legos out from time to time, so I can't say I've outgrown them. That sort of makes my toys not age-appropriate in both directions.

No; at least not after infancy for me. I was offered "age-appropriate" toys, but didn't have any interest in playing with them. I liked to take things apart to see how & why they worked, and I still do today. I don't mean take things apart and then throw away; I mean I liked to take apart, examine, understand, and put back together perfectly. The first thing was a mechanical music box inside a teddy bear, which I "NEEDED" to know how it worked and why the little metal fingers made different tones. I remember the orgasmic (for lack of a better word), fascination I had, even though I was only a year or a year and a half old, and needed help to get it apart. Then it was various building toys such as Lego and Lincoln Logs, which fascinated me because I had to understand how things balanced or didn't, and how sturdy or weak an arrangement of objects can be. By age 9, I was dragging home old radios and TV sets, because I had to know how a TV could have a picture of someone in another place, appearing "live". It took me a few years, but I learned enough that by age 13, I got an after-school job as a TV repair tech helper. That led to a 15-year career as a licensed TV and consumer electronics repair technician.

I've "had to know" the theory and workings behind just about everything mechanical and electronic, and I have built my own Diesel truck that runs on used vegetable oil; of various surplus items on eBay and a junked Toyota 4x4 on eBay. Right now I am building an entire 2-story guest house and garage on our ranch; including septic system, wiring & plumbing, and even concrete and masonry work. I will have workers do a lot of labor in order that the project will be done within the time allowed by the county permit, and I had to hire an architect and an engineer to do the plans and blue prints in order to be legal and permitted, although I did the wiring plan myself to exceed all codes and to include various odd things that I want, such as an air raid siren on the roof.

Again, starting as soon as I could use my hands and head, my "toys" are mechanical things, and were never age-appropriate until I was an adult.

Charles