Scientists Reveal Best Toys To Help Your Child's Brain Development for Christmas

As Christmas creeps ever closer, it can be difficult to know what to get your child for the big day. Toys provide an enormous opportunity for childhood brain development—but not all toys are created equal.

"Play is crucial to children's mental, physical, and social development at every stage, teaching skills that last a lifetime," Scott Eberle, former vice president of play studies at the Strong National Museum of Play in New York and editor of The American Journal of Play, tells Newsweek. "Children learn language itself in playful exchanges. They learn to explore their world through play."

Research has increasingly shown that play is just as important, if not more, than formal education when it comes to brain development. "Play provides opportunities for children to practice and learn all sorts of skills," Sarah Gerson, a psychologist at the University of Cardiff in the U.K. who specializes in play and childhood development, told Newsweek. "It's really the primary learning tool for young children."

Different types of play stimulate different parts of the brain, allowing children to develop a range of life skills.

"Children learn spatial relationships at play, with stacking toys and blocks, for instance," Eberle said. "This is a very basic and essential skill. Remember the cone of colorful plastic doughnuts? Young players begin to learn the concept of sequence and they learn how to match and sort size and color when they play with that toy. They are also fun to chew on.

"Blocks teach cause and effect—build them up and knock them down. And when kids manipulate blocks, they learn about shapes and how they fit together. The most rudimentary puzzles also teach and exercise these skills."

Playing with these more construction-based toys has been associated with the development of spatial reasoning, reading and maths skills later in life. Other toys, meanwhile, may be important for developing our social skills.

"In our research we've found that when children play with toys like dolls with others and alone, in comparison to playing with tablet games alone, this activates an area of the brain associated with social processing," Salim Hashmi, a lecturer in psychology at King's College London, told Newsweek. "This pattern of brain activity was explained by toys prompting the reflection of the internal states of the characters and others more in comparison with playing digital games."

Gerson and her lab have found that playing with dolls can initiate the same level of social processing and development as playing with other children. "We found that a social processing region of the brain is similarly activated when children play alone with dolls or with another person," she said. "This suggests that dolls may help children practice skills like perspective taking, empathy, and consideration of other people, even when they're playing by themselves."

A major consideration here is the stereotyping of toys for boys and girls. However, Gerson said that playing with dolls initiates similar levels of social processing in both genders. "If gender stereotyping discourages children from playing with certain kinds of toys (or parents from buying them), this could prevent opportunities for learning from and with them," Gerson said.

But at what stage during a child's development should we be introducing these different types of toys? "I'd keep it simple, starting with the cone of stacking doughnuts," Eberle said. "Then when children are a little older, I'd throw in dinosaur figurines and dolls—both are great for fantasy play that encourages storytelling. Then crayons and coloring books because children learn eye-hand coordination as they correlate color and space. (A chalkboard is just as good.) And these, too, encourage storytelling.

"I'll mention one toy by name. PlayDoh—it's not quite endlessly inspiring, because it gets eaten and mixed to an unappetizing brown that eventually sticks in the carpet. But while it lasts the 'clay' is a great aid to free play.

"Notice I didn't include any electronic toys. But if I had to pick one, it would be the kind that offer a series of lighted buttons accompanied by beeps that enables a game that enhances memory of sequences of sound and light."

These recommendations are only a guide, and not all children fit into the same box. "My general advice is to learn what your child likes and follow their lead," Gerson said. "If they lead play and bring joy and motivation to it, they'll draw parents and others into it and create positive experiences. Parents may not see the value in a toy their child prefers, but if the child sees it as valuable, this can create positive learning opportunities and social experiences that go beyond the toy itself."

This also means that you don't have to force your child to play with toys that focus on skills like reading and maths. "Sometimes parents put a lot of weight on whether a toy or game is specifically teaching their child an academic skill," Gerson said. "In reality, children are really experts at creating learning experiences in ways we wouldn't even think of as adults. And the positive relationships and experiences that come out of this kind of play are truly valuable."

It's also important to give your kids enough time to play and develop these skills. "Not providing enough time for free play where kids exercise their bodies and their imaginations and figure out where they fit in their little societies [is bad]," Eberle said. "And then there's butting in. The more play is managed and specified, directed and curtailed, the less it's like play and the more it's like work."

Ultimately, the best toys are those that nurture your child's imagination. Eberle said: "Here's a general rule: avoid the toy that supplies too much and leaves little room for imagination. Think of the toys that are less likely to sustain interest than the box they came in. And speaking of the box, the plain old cardboard box is now one of the featured toys in the Strong National Museum of Play National Toy Hall of Fame."

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