Parents, step away from the toy aisle.
It turns out your toddler doesn’t need a mountain of plushies, plastic cars and magnetic mayhem — according to experts, little tots only really need four toys. Yep, four.
According to Dr. Alexia Metz, an occupational therapist and mom of twins, toddlers thrive when there’s less to play with, not more.
“We keep bringing home more and more toys, thinking this is the toy that will get my kid into Harvard,” Metz tells TODAY.com.
“But then we don’t see the value in their playing because they can’t organize themselves enough to play.”
Metz led a widely cited 2017 study at the University of Toledo, observing tots between 18 and 30 months old in rooms outfitted with different numbers of toys.
When kids were let loose in a space with 16 options, it was toy chaos — they ran from item to item like overstimulated bees in a preschool garden.
“That exploration is so fast-paced that they don’t have time to sit and explore all the things a toy can do before they need to move on to the next one,” Metz says.
But by dropping that number to just four toys — something magical happened: the kids slowed down, were more engaged and they played longer.
“They went and they looked at them all, but then they had time to go back to each toy,” she explains.
Instead of bouncing from one shiny object to the next, kids started stacking blocks, pushing buttons and even diving into pretend play — the kind that child development experts drool over.
“There wasn’t that enticement of something else to go check out. Kids knew they wouldn’t miss anything if they sat there for another minute to play with the toy and see what it can do,” Metz adds.
Fewer toys = fewer distractions.
Toddlers focus better and use their imaginations more when they’re not drowning in options.
It’s something Metz saw play out at home, too.
While raising her twins in a 1,000-square-foot Chicago apartment, she says their space forced her to get picky.
“There was just no space,” she recalls. “My kids had everything they could want or need — and lots of these are really great, therapist-approved toys — but it’s just too much. They can’t settle down and play.”
Now, to be clear: Metz isn’t telling you to torch your toy bins.
You don’t have to Marie Kondo your entire living room. But you should be strategic.
“You can have your hundreds of toys if you have a place to store them, so that when a kid has time to play there’s just a smaller number available at the moment,” she says.
That means rotating toys — stash some away, then swap them back in later. It keeps things fresh, but manageable.