Sometimes a Toy Is Worth More Than Us

There is a sentence that can hurt a parent’s pride: Sometimes, in the eyes of a child, a toy is more valuable than their mother or father.

We adults do not like this sentence. We think of the shoes we bought, the food we carried home, the nights we stayed awake, the money we counted twice before spending once. Then the child takes a cheap plastic truck, holds it to the chest, and cries as if the whole world has ended.

It looks unfair.

But childhood has never been fair according to adult rules.

A child does not know the price of bread, rent, electricity, medicine, or school clothes. A child does not know that the father came home with pain in his back or that the mother postponed buying something for herself. Love has no receipt in the child’s pocket. Sacrifice has no price tag hanging from it.

The toy does.

Maybe that is why the toy is easier to understand.

A red car is red. A doll is a doll. A wooden horse does not come home angry because the boss shouted at it. A toy does not say, “Not now, I am tired.” It does not talk about tomorrow’s bills. It does not tell the child to be quiet because guests are coming.

Adults are complicated.

Toys are honest.

And sometimes honesty wins.

There is another side to this. Most children own almost nothing. The house belongs to the parents. The furniture belongs to the parents. The television, the phone, the money, the rules, even the hour of sleep belongs to the parents. Then one small truck appears and suddenly the child has a kingdom.

Of course the child protects it.

The poor understand this better than the rich. When a child has a room full of toys, one broken car is only one broken car. But when there are only two or three toys in the house, a missing wheel can become a national disaster.

Adults may laugh at this.

They should not.

We also cry over objects.

We call them different names so we can feel mature. We say “my car,” “my house,” “my watch,” “my father’s old radio,” “my mother’s ring.” We do not call them toys because adults are embarrassed by simple truths. We prefer expensive words for the same attachment.

A child sees a plastic truck and imagines a road.

An adult sees a new car and imagines freedom.

The difference is mostly the bank loan.

So when a child cries because a toy is broken, “It is only a toy” is often a useless sentence. To us, maybe. To the child, a small world has collapsed.

This does not mean we should buy a new toy every time something breaks. Life is not a shopping centre, and love is not a credit card. A child also has to learn that things break, disappear, and sometimes cannot be replaced.

But there is a difference between teaching loss and mocking pain.

We can say, “I know you loved it.”

That sentence costs nothing.

Funny, isn’t it? We spend money to show love, then forget that sometimes love is the cheapest thing in the room.

One day that toy will disappear. It will stay under a bed, lose a wheel, be given to a cousin, or end up in a rubbish bag during a move. Years later, the child may not even remember what colour it was.

But the child may remember something else.

Who laughed.

Who shouted.

Who said, “Stop crying.”

And who sat down beside them.

Maybe parents do not have to be more valuable than the toy every day. Maybe this is a foolish competition created by adult pride. The toy can win today.

Let it win.

Because one day the toy will break.

And when it does, the child will look for something plastic cannot give.

A lap.

A hand.

A voice saying, “I am here.”

That is when the real value appears.