> > This is a big issue for me. When I was a kid, the greater percentage of the toys actually encouraged you, as a kid, to be creative. my brother and I could spend a long time setting up our armies of little, green army men, and then even longer playing out scenarios, creating dialogue, sound effects, everything. However, now I can walk through the toy aisles and see how nearly everything makes it's own noise, or essentially "plays itself" and doesn't really require the child to do much more than push a button. This is so sad.
> > Yesterday, I had a breif conversation with my daughter about a toy train that we have. This train allows you to either switch it on (then it drives itself, forward, one speed), or leave it off (in which you can operate it manually as if it weren't powered). Initially, she maintained that in order to play with it, you had to turn it on. I then pointed out that it's much more versatile if you "play the toy" rather than have it "play itself". I then related the same concept to her Barbies, and she seemed to almost understand what I was saying.
> > After seeing one of my kids squeeze the crap out of a mere stuffed animal in a vane attempt to make it say something, it sorta reshreshing to see them playing enthusiasticly with a cardboard paper towell roll.
>
> And now for the voice of a younger generation. I wasn't much for the toys that "played themselves" when I was a little. I was more into Legos and sets of little plastic animals and people who'd have epic adventures in the little cities I built for them in the piles of junk in our storage room. Most of all, I think I liked inventing these elaborate role-playing games that I'd play with my friends at recess. We made up characters and everything.
>

I'm with Liz; we're not that passive a generation. :-) I used to like paper dolls... so I drew a set of about 25 of them, all with names and personalities, and they had about 10 outfits apiece. (I had way too much free time.) Also fun: humongous solo or collaborative Lego structures, and chain reactions that started when someone opened the door. (I could get out through the window.) And then there were the tricks on top of the monkeybars which led to 5 years of gymnastics lessons. :-) One of the drawers in my dresser still is devoted to oddments that it might be neat to make something out of; I reach into it when I get bored. My favorite amusement always was, and still is, though, reading a book.

As for the overprotective parents... my mother was (and is) one. Which really bothers me; I would rather do something terribly wrong and find out by experience what to do - and perhaps how to do it successfully - than be told not to do something because it *might* be harmful. She's another parent who would prefer me to be watching TV than on the computer precisely because it is more passive; I can't do anything wrong watching TV. Likewise with prepackaged toys and entertainments; you can't get into trouble following what someone else has already decided is the "best" way to play with a toy. I would like to think that I haven't succumbed to the pressure to take things as they are given to me without considering my own way as well, but I've never been encouraged to, and neither have many of friends. It wasn't so unusual to be inventive as young child, but those who are later are considered, well, a little weird, and I wish it wasn't so.

-Fob"instructions? we don't need no stinking instructions!"ulis

> Cheez "Just letting you know the kind of recreational creativity you're talking about still exists... or at least it did in the late '80s/early '90s" Liz
> >

> P.S. This time-honored tradition is still going strong as well. The kid down the street is at any given moment just inches away from blowing up his brother's car by detonating his out-of-state explosives in the driveway.
>

P.P.S. Oh, yeah... is there any kid who *isn't* a pyro to some degree or another? My favorite 5th of July tradition since 7th grade has been to go get a load of extra-jumbo sparklers with my best friend, take some industrial-strength bug spray (the kind that shoots wasps at 20 feet), and let 'er rip. No one has been seriously injured yet. :-)