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Toys - Put Some up for Later:

Children have very short attention spans, and they tire easily of the same old thing. This can get pricey when it comes to toys, since this means they will also get sick of playing with the same old thing all the time. There is a way around spending a small fortune on keeping your child occupied, though:

Just before either Christmas or your child's birthday (or any other holiday where your child will be receiving many new toys), go through all of your child's toys and take out about half of them. Then you will store them somewhere (a box or a storage tub with a lid works great). You can store them in an attic, garage, etc. It doesn't matter where, just as long as your child won't have access to them.

It is important to do this while your child is not around, possibly during naptime or when the child is out with the other parent. If your child sees you put them up, it can be a bad ordeal. They will not want their toys being taken out of their room or play area. Another important point of doing this is that you do not take any of your child's favorite toys. Instead, it should be those toys that you rarely see your child play with, this way they won't notice that they are gone. If you try to get rid of the stuffed animal that they sleep with every night, they are probably going to notice, and they will be very unhappy about it.

Then, you leave those toys up for as long as it takes for your child to become bored with their new toys (most often, this is within a fairly short period of time—about a month). Then, you will want to wait until your child isn't awake and box up some of their newer toys. After you have done this, you will wait until you child is around, and bring out the box of the old toys. By waiting until they are awake, you are letting them see that you are bringing in "new" toys for them to play with, and you are drawing their attention to them. It will also work of you simply replace their new toys with the old ones when they aren't around, but bringing them in while your child is watching makes them feel like they have something new, which is one of the important parts of them staying occupied for longer.

It is also a good idea to simply set the box or tub in front of them and let them dig out all the toys. They will have a lot of fun doing this.

Then, as soon as you can tell that your child is getting bored of these toys, you can bring in the other box. This also works well if you only bring back in about half of what you took out. This way, you get to do it more often, and it's not the same toys being rotated back and forth. Then, once you have started this, every holiday provides a new opportunity to add more toys to the rotation.

With babies, this can work well because they are likely to have completely forgotten about the toys in storage, and they really will feel like they have gotten new toys. But, this doesn't only work on babies. You can continue this with toddlers and small children, as well. They will know that the toys you brought in from storage are theirs. They will recognize many of them. It still works, though, and you will be surprised to learn that the little toy that sat ignored in their bedroom for three months (without being touched or looked at), has now been missed sorely and is getting the attention it deserves.

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