How Baby Toys Can Encourage Your Child's Intelligence

These days, it seems as though there's a plethora of baby toys out there that all claim to encourage your child's intelligence, increase physical development and even encourage hidden talents to form and grow. Whether you prefer to surround your child with more traditional toys like dolls and wooden blocks, or you want your child to play with the most technologically advanced toys on the market today, it's helpful to research just how baby toys can improve your child's intelligence - and whether or not you need a high-tech toy to encourage healthy cognitive, emotional and physical development. 

Parents know that baby toys aren't just for a child's entertainment alone - rather, toys represent a vital way to teach children how to adapt to their environment and child. Back before the invention of computer games and Fisher Price kitchen sets, children played with dolls and trucks as a source of entertainment. For girls, dolls welcomed the child into a society where women were responsible for being the nurturing, caring and domestic gender; boys were expected to play with blocks and engage with more vigorous toys, which helped to create an active and strong man. For better or for worse, researchers have pointed out that toys are highly responsible for teaching children early on the rules of the society that they're adapting to - this is why you'll still see such a gender divide between boys and girls, and the toys that they're encouraged to play with.

So if baby toys can encourage your child's intelligence regarding the rules and roles that he or she is expected to fulfill in society, can they improve cognition?

In a word: yes! Psychologists, medical researchers and scientists have conducted enough research to show that babies are born hardwired to learn. As your baby has to learn extremely quickly how to adapt to the world around him (in fact, the amount of knowledge that every baby has to learn in order to survive is staggering when you think about it!), this means that his brain is hardwired with neurological pathways that are ready to learn from experiences, sensations, sounds and the like. It stands to reason that the more complex the interactions with experiences and sensations are, the more likely it is that your child will have to develop more complex cognitive abilities to adapt. This research has given rise to a whole new industry of baby toys, such as Baby Einstein® or Baby Beethoven® - all of which are designed to give your child complex interactions and experiences that serve to invigorate cognitive ability. 

Baby toys that encourage interactive play are often the most celebrated by child experts, as during the first six to twelve months of life, your child uses interactive experiences in order to improve hand-eye coordination and form a rudimentary vocabulary of a few basic words. Toys that fuel your child's desire to learn, sense and experience through interactions will only help to encourage his intelligence, as it will speed along mental development. Additionally, goal-oriented toys (such as kitchen play sets, pails and shovels, plastic toolboxes and other popular items) help babies to learn to imitate grown-ups, increase their vocabulary and start to experiment with their surrounding environment. Since this developmental stage typically occurs around 18 to 24 months, it's no wonder that parents affectionately refer to this period of childhood as "the terrible twos"! 

Baby toys can also make your child smarter by teaching him vital problem-solving skills that he'll be able to use well into adulthood. Due to your child's mental makeup, he is going to be naturally curious and inquisitive about the environment in which he lives - and toys that help him to not only experience this environment, but to solve problems in it as well, will encourage superior intellectual development.

So now that we've identified just how baby toys can make children smarter, what kind of baby toys should you buy for your little darling? 

Child experts recommend vibrant, hands-on activities and baby toys will have much more of an impact on your baby's cognitive development than more passive items, like video games. While it may seem as though educational video games can help your child to master problem-solving, these toys are best suited for children ages five and up, who've passed the developmental stage where hands-on experiences and sensations are so important for intelligence. Given this evidence, it seems as though the more "old-fashioned" toys like dolls, baby gyms, musical items, shape sorters, storybooks, simple musical instruments and other toys are much more suited for children ages 6 months to 2 years of age.

Remember, baby toys are meant to be fun, vibrant and engaging - so make sure that your child is surrounded by plenty of them to touch, experience and explore!