Kids Don’t Need Plastic Junk. So, Please Stop Buying It.
In most cases, parents don’t wonder about the designers for the check-out lines at stores. Piles of plastic toys are strategically placed at children’s eye level that should grab their minds. Here is placed the mass of the disposable plastic junk that will break or be forgotten as quickly as it was bought. It is placed strategically at the end of the children’s shopping experience, perfectly created in bright colors and designed to suck in little eyes with big desires. That stresses people out too, so they give in and buy whatever for their little screaming ones, trying to go out with no scene.
After purchasing toys the children have what this quick dopamine fix is doing to them.
This reward neurohormone is produced by the hypothalamus and released during pleasurable situations. When a child is given the toy of their wanting, a rush of dopamine floods the brain and everyone is happy, or maybe not.
When the flood of feel-good dopamine becomes habit-forming the desire to feel that goodness and elation again may instruct more meltdowns to get more toys, which produces more dopamine. Even though there is a positive side of dopamine for the cognitive development of the children, they shouldn’t be learned on over-consumption and retail therapy.
Further, any plastic toy that is available at the local supermarket has far-reaching effects throughout all webs of life. Many of those little plastic toys that are made cheaply in some faraway land are disastrous for the environment and people. People are living in the days where animals on remote islands dying from suffocation due to plastic ingestion. This is one of the enormous signs that tell us that the total plastic consumption needs to stop as soon as possible. The use of that little plastic toy is usually short and can be forgotten soon after being added to the rest of the plastic toy heap at home. However, it may take up to 500 years to breakdown, or even worse is that breaking means breaking down into microplastics, which are usually showed up in human bodies.
Here are numerous theories about what do young children need during their development. They, actually need the same things as all need throughout time. Here are some of them:
1) Love.
Love can be shown in different ways, for instance, when people, including children, are held, kissed, hugged, and touched in the ways that they allow and enjoy. Then they experience the process in the brain during which oxytocin is released.
Together with dopamine and serotonin (body’s “happy hormones”) the oxytocin is gentler and has much more beneficial effects for everyone involved.
2) Oxytocin heals.
The “love hormone (oxytocin) is well known for its role in childbirth and breastfeeding. In the intimate moments spent with children, oxytocin is front and center, it is doing all the wonderful things that it can do.
The oxytocin is doing things like:
– Bonding,
– Creating trust,
– Reducing social fears.
– Healing wounds
– Minimizing depression
– Relieving pain
– Encouraging generosity
– Reducing stress
– Influencing empathy.
3) Kisses really do help “ouches.”
In a moment of stress, the purchasing toy will release the dopamine in both child and caregiver and they will feel great. It is good to know that the stress of caregivers will pass even if the toy is not bought, while for children, they’ll be stressed and maybe kicking and screaming as they leave the store, but later it’ll pass, too.
However, consumer-driven instant satisfaction doesn’t always come. Instead of buying something people can get out of the store, hopefully with an ounce of sanity, and hug each other. Holding each other will allow the healing flow of oxytocin that is natural, accessible, and affordable.
These moments can teach people and guide them, giving lessons on what it means to be human rather than what it means to be a consumer. These moments will build relationships among the people rather than build landfills of the toys or other unusable things.
Source: achnews.org