Your Kid Needs Less Stuff #82

If your child jumps from toy to toy, asks for screens, or says “I’m bored” all day, this might be the real reason

If your toddler or preschooler seems overwhelmed, constantly switching activities, refusing to play independently, or needing you to step in all the time, it’s easy to assume they need more stimulation. But often, the opposite is true. Too many toys can lead to shorter attention spans, more meltdowns, and less meaningful play. In this video, we break down what’s actually happening in your child’s brain, and how simplifying your environment can reduce overwhelm, support emotional regulation, and help your child engage more deeply (without you constantly entertaining them).

What You’ll Learn:

•  Why too many toys can lead to boredom, frustration, and shorter attention spans 
•  What’s happening in your child’s brain when they feel “overwhelmed” by options 
•  How to reduce toys in a realistic, doable way (without going full minimalist) 
•  The difference between open-ended play and “quick dopamine” toys 
•  How to handle “I’m bored” without jumping in, and why that moment matters 

This approach is grounded in developmental psychology and neuroscience, but translated into real-life parenting, what actually works when your kid is melting down, ignoring you, or bouncing from one thing to the next. The goal isn’t perfection or rigid systems. It’s helping you create a calmer home, reduce power struggles, and raise a child who can focus, play, and think independently.

If you’re tired of second-guessing your parenting or feeling like you have to constantly “fix” your child’s behavior, this channel is here to make things clearer and easier, one small shift at a time.

Transcript

Why More Toys Backfire

Jon @WholeParent 0:00

I'm gonna start this episode by saying something a little bit controversial. More toys don't make kids happier. They make them worse at playing. Welcome back to the Whole Parent Podcast. My name is John. I'm a parenting researcher, author, PhD student, and I got a background in counseling. All of that matters, but it doesn't matter half as much as the fact that I'm also a dad of four, which means that I get to actually see what works day to day and not just what sounds good on paper. And what I've found is that there's this massive gap in parenting advice. On one side, you've got research and brain development and behavioral neuroscience and attachment, and all of that is incredibly valuable, but it tends to feel pretty abstract and hard to apply and disconnected from what's actually happening in your home when your kid's melting down or completely ignoring you. And then on the other side, you've got everyday parenting advice. Stuff you see on Instagram or TikTok, tips, scripts, quick fixes. And some of that works for a moment, but a lot of it falls apart when things get intense. Or it doesn't hold up across every situation. This podcast is designed to fill that gap. We're taking the science and we're translating it into something that you can actually use. If that sounds good to you, let's dig in. So I had this moment a while back that I wanted to share with you. It was a pretty typical afternoon at our house, nothing dramatic, no big meltdowns, no outings planned, and my kids were all being pretty quiet, which, you know, I don't know if that's a good or bad thing. But I walk into the playroom expecting to see them playing quietly, but instead, all three of them are just kind of like drifting. And one of them had a toy in his hand, but he's not playing with it. He's doing this like weird repetitive movement with it, like not using it in any sort of specific way, just like flipping it over and over again. Another one of my kids just keeps putting like one thing down and picking up something else and then putting that thing down. And there's my third kid is just literally physically surrounded by toys in the middle of the room, like suffocatingly covered in stuff. And none of, like I said, none of them are really playing. Uh, and meanwhile, my fourth, my oldest, has already been hounding me throughout the house, asking for his tablet, like asking for a screen. And at that moment, I sort of realized that he had come from that environment. Like, this is where he was when he came to find me. And I had this moment where I just stood in that overwhelming room. And I thought to myself, how is this even possible? Like, how can you have this many toys and still be this bored? Like, if you looked at this room objectively, it would look like a dream playroom. Like every category of toy was covered. We had building toys and pretend play and guys that's you know, like little characters from different shows and stuff that they like, and vehicles and costumes, and stuffed animals, and art supplies. And I, if you don't know, my playroom is in my basement. So, like, this is their space, and it's just it can get mountainous with all the stuff that they bring down there, like open-ended stuff, closed-ended stuff that like there's like a half-finished puzzle somewhere just buried in the rubble. And if you had told me years ago, like, hey, this is what your kids are gonna have someday, I would have been like, wow, I was a great dad. Like, I'm nailing it, they'll never be bored. Um, but here we were, right? Like, and they're definitely bored. Like, there's if I'm honest, my first instinct, like the is I think the automatic parenting instinct, is just to jump in and fix in that moment. So, what I wanted to say specifically, I wanted to be like, hey, well, why don't we and just identify like one toy and be like, hey, why don't we build something with these Legos? Uh, or oh, why don't we draw something with these markers? Or, oh, look at this thing that we haven't played with in a while. Don't you want to play with that? And just like steer them each, either individually or or collectively towards something productive. Because I think that's what I thought was the problem. That's what we all think is the problem. We think the issue is, oh, they just need help choosing. Like they just need a little push in the right direction, a little guidance. But for some reason, this did not feel in this moment like a choice problem. I think it's because of some stuff I've been reading lately. It felt like their brains were overloaded. So I thought to myself, like, what if the problem is not that they don't have enough to play with or they don't know what to play with? What if it is actually that they have way too much to play with? Everything in our culture tells us that more is always better, right? More choices equals more freedom. And that's the assumption. That's what we're told, and that's what we're sold. And that's what we kind of learn to subconsciously believe. And if you're a parent listening to this, you probably feel pressure all the time: birthdays, holidays, hand-me-downs at church or whatever, random target trips, where it always ends up that you were walking past that toy aisle. It feels like the toy aisles just multiply, like they're all over, they're on end caps, and somehow something finds its way into your cart and it adds up. Like it's just the system that we're all part of, whether we like it or not. And let's just set this the cost of all of that aside in a difficult economy that we find ourselves in right now. Uh, I think most of us have had the thought at least once, because again, I think this is what we are conditioned to believe. Maybe if they just had that one more thing, they would get really into that one thing, right? And so we keep adding and adding. And the fact that we're adding is the thing that's getting in the way. Like, that's where the journey started for me. Because I went back to the research and I was like, I know that this is not right. And so I start digging into this and I realize, oh, this is not actually about toys at all. This is about attention, as it is so frequently with kids. And what I was seeing in my playroom in that afternoon was exactly what you would expect to see when brains are given too many options at once. The environment of our home, the environment of your home, is shaping how your kids play. And more importantly, it's shaping whether they can actually play deeply at all. This topic, the too many toys and clutter and simplifying your home, sounds very surface level. It sounds like, oh, it's just like organization, right? People always think that, like, oh, if I just like organize the playroom, or maybe it's like a just like a minimalist declutter your house trend. But at its core, it's actually about how kids experience the world that they're in. And when you look at early childhood development, you realize that play is not just something that kids do. Play is actually how kids are building their brain. It's how they are developing a sense of attention and problem solving. It's how they practice and process their emotions. It's how they learn to stay with something long enough to actually get good at that thing, right? It's like literally how they build attention. And when all of that process gets disrupted, you don't wind up with a kid who's just like a little distracted. You wind up with a kid who struggles like deeply with persistence because like they they cannot stay focused on anything because everything is overwhelming them all the time. And this is kind of where it gets personal for me because I'm not just looking at this like messy playroom for me. I'm looking at the early foundations of like what I came from. Like, that's what my playroom looked like in my basement too. I had two older brothers and I had all of their toys, and their toys were super cool. Okay, like my brothers grew up in the 80s. Okay, we had every cool action figure, every cool building block superhero thing. And I was just surrounded by it. And when I see my kids in that same environment, I start to see the early foundations of how my kids, like me, are going to experience boredom and creativity and frustration and even effort differently. And if I'm honest, I like see the same exact pattern that I fear in them, which is always scary in myself. Like I've always struggled with that moment with when I like am super passionate about something, I'm like super all in on it. And then when the initial novelty and excitement wears off, like I cannot bring myself to finish it. The first 80% I am all in. And then like I never finish putting the trim on the baseboards in the foyer of my house. Uh, I'm all about big ideas, I'm all about momentum, I'm all about energy. Like the amount of things I've started with Whole Parent that I haven't seen through, like the amount of courses that I've literally written and recorded and never released. Like when it's engaging stuff, when it's novel, like I said, when it's new, like I can be so driven. But then you get to that last 20%. And yes, part of this is that I'm ADHD, but like I just wonder how much of my environment was exacerbating that. Uh the part where it gets whatever, whatever that last, you know, little bit is the finishing where it gets repetitive or when there's just like no novelty left in it, it just takes like white-knuckled, sustained follow-through and effort. That's when I feel the dopamine just drop off and my brain starts looking for any exit. And usually, like the thing that it looks for is the next stimulating thing, the next toy that I can buy that I can work with. And suddenly finishing becomes like really, really hard for me because I've just started a new project. And the struggles around this sort of thing have been true for me for literally my whole life. Like I said, I've I'm have ADHD, I was diagnosed as a kid, I was 11, and I was medicated basically entirely through middle school and high school, and even a little bit into college. And even today, as an adult, I understand like who like like literally does research on this stuff. Like I understand the stuff. I studied this stuff. I can still feel how strong that pull is away from finishing and toward novelty, away from any friction, toward anything that gives me that like quick hit of like, ooh, this is fresh, this is new, that dopamine, instead of requiring me to like sit in the slower, more monotonous part of the task. And so when I see my kids doing this thing, and I'm thinking of the second one, right? The one who's like picking up a toy and like looking at it for a second and then putting it down. And like this is also my little, and I'm not gonna call him out who he is, but this is also my little that every single time we go to the store, he has to have a new toy. When I see him bouncing from toy to toy to toy to toy to toy, and I see him struggling to stay with anything once it stops being instantly rewarding, it just feels like different, it hits different. And I'm trying not to hear the shark music, but I'm also trying not to just like fix behavior in the moment, if that makes sense. I'm trying to think about what kind of relationship that he's building with effort. And is he learning that age engagement comes from inside or that there has to be a new thing outside that keeps him going? Because I know what that feels like, to constantly chase that next hit of novelty. And I I know how like valuable that can feel. I also don't want that to be the only way that he knows how to move through the world. And so to be clear, I'm not saying that like this is the cause of ADHD or something like that. Um, it's not like a cause and effect thing. I'm saying that just having so much overwhelm in your house, and in this case we're talking about toys, like it can it can reveal things, it doesn't cause ADHD. But like what we practice becomes easier, if that makes sense. And what we do don't practice, like doesn't become easier. And so there's this aspect of like, oh, well, if like is the reason that I bounced from thing to thing because I had ADHD? Maybe probably, but also I lived in an environment where that was allowed and that was almost like enabled. And so if if your kid's world is constantly pulling them towards the next thing, and they already have that internal bias towards novelty that makes staying with something very hard, like and it doesn't come naturally for them, I think I think we're setting them up for failure. Okay, I want to take a break, and then I want to go on to the next part of this episode. All right, this brings us to what I'm gonna call the core idea of this episode, the thesis, so to speak, uh that everything else we're gonna talk about kind of stems from, which is more options do not lead to better play. They lead to shallower play. More toys do not lead to more engagement, they lead to more fragmentation, if anything. And when we actually reduce the amount of stuff, the noise, we simplify the environment, we like drastically make our kids better players. Because we're not taking something away from our kids, we're actually giving them something. We're giving them space that they need to deeply focus and create and get lost in something and to feel a sense of satisfaction that only comes from that sustained attention and flow state. And by the way, if you're like, well, my kid does struggle and they they do, maybe they are diagnosed with ADHD, you know what we know? That it's a superpower if they have the space in their brain. Like the things that I can accomplish when I have space to do so are remarkable. And so for the rest of today's episode, we're gonna be breaking down exactly what's happening in your child's brain when there are too many options and why that leads to shorter attention span and more frustration, usually more parental involvement and ultimately less meaningful play. And I'm gonna try to walk you through how to fix it. It doesn't require becoming a minimalist, uh, although if you want to, go ahead and do it. Doesn't require throwing everything away or some sort of complicated toy rotation system, because uh I'm just telling you personally, like just no way could I handle something like that. Like 100% I've tried, no way. Uh, this is what actually worked for us in real life. Uh let's let's let's dig in. So there's this study that it always comes back to, like when I think about this topic. It's researchers set up two different play environments for toddlers. In one room, they're putting a few toys, really simple, open-ended, easy to engage thing, playing engage things like play silks and blocks and stuff like that. In the other room, uh, they filled the space which with just like way more toys. And it's everything, like every, like basically a toy store, like everything a kid could want. And they put the same age kids, same developmental stage in each room. The only difference is the number of options, like what they could play with. And what they found was that when there were fewer toys, kids actually played for much longer. They played more creatively, they played with each other more, and they explored each toy in way more ways. Like they they stayed with them. And when there were more stories, more toys, kids got more possessive, they played shorter, more scattered, more surface level, and more like just like pick up, put down, pick up, pick down, like a almost franticness, which is exactly what most of us are seeing basically every day when and why, like they concluded in this research that the problem was not that kids couldn't focus, it was that the environment was asking their brain to do something that it just developmentally is not built for yet. And by the way, none of us are built for this. Like, why do you think you get overwhelmed when you walk into a grocery store and you look at the mustard aisle and there's 42 types of the same type? You know, like how many different brands of yellow mustard do we need? I understand. Like, I'm not talking about, oh, we need Dijon mustard or spicy mustard. I get it. There's variability in mustard. Do we need five different types of just plain yellow mustard? Probably not. But what does it cause? It causes decision fatigue. And so none of our brains are built for this. But if you think your kid's brain is built for this, man, like not at all. So, what's actually happening neurologically in those moments, not for you for you in the mustard out, but for your kid, is that the filtering system that you have to basically go, oh, okay, I'm just gonna pick the cheapest one, right? Their brain doesn't do that, right? It doesn't ignore this to focus on everything else. Everything feels loud and relevant, and everything is always competing for their attention. So the filtering system is not built up. So when you put them in a space with 30 or 50 or I don't know, a thousand toys is what it feels like in my house sometimes, their brain is not experiencing that as like, oh, this is abundance. I'm in the Garden of Eden of toys. It's just experiencing this pressure, like pressure to scan and choose, and pressure to switch, and you don't want to miss out. And what if a kid gets a really good toy that you didn't see before? And eventually the system just sort of stalls out, which is what I saw in my kids, which is where you get that weird mix of kids who are walking up to you and saying, like, I'm bored, or I want my tablet or whatever. Um, or I just don't know what to do. Like, this house is boring, even though they're surrounded by toys. It's not, and you want to say to them in those moments, like, I've been there, like, can you imagine if I had these cool toys? Like, I would have just played with them. No, you wouldn't have. Because you would have been overwhelmed too. It's like, like I said, this is this is you probably wouldn't even be able to play today. Because you you go onto Netflix and you spend 45 minutes scrolling when you're like, oh, all of these look like good movies. Well, which one do you want to watch? You want to watch a rom com? Oh, but I I saw this drama. That was the drama I really want to watch too. Okay, okay. And then you what do you know what do you wind up watching? You wind up watching The Office, right? Or it's why you wind up having 10 tabs open and you feel like you're not doing anything because there's 10 tabs open at all times, all times. And it's why all of your productivity tools probably make you less productive because your brain does not thrive on unlimited options. We have this idea that we're multitasking, we're not. Like you're just oscillating back and forth. You're just providing attention, like half of your attention to multiple things and going really, very quickly back and forth between them. Like brains thrive when they're put under constraint. This is why I love that scene in the social network when Mark Zuckerberg tells the coding team that they need to like plug, they like lock in or something, or like they like plug in, or I don't remember what they call it, but they basically they like put headphones on and they just lock in and work hard, they like turn off their phone and everything for like an hour and they just code. Yeah, like they were providing their brain with constraints and it made them infinitely more productive. Kids feel that like a thousand times more because what you can do with your executive functioning and working memory of even having the illusion that you're able to multitask, your kids can't do. So remember when we started, I remember when we first started this experiment. Uh, I kind of fudged this a little bit. Like this happened a long time ago in my house. Um, this was not that recently. Uh, when we started the actual experiment of having fewer toys, it was not like some big dramatic thing. It was pretty small adjustments. The story is 100% true. Uh, it just didn't happen last week. Like, we didn't donate everything. We didn't become minimalists overnight. I mean, if you went around our house now, you would not think that we're minimalists. Uh, we just took a big portion of the toys and we put them in the back part of our basement where our kids don't really have access. So it's just out of sight, out of mind. And I expected pushback from especially my oldest. Where did everything go? I interestingly, I got more pushback from his friends than him. Uh, the other thing I expected was a lot more boredom. But instead, what happened was like everything slowed down in our life. And my kids would walk into the playroom, which now had literally 90% less stuff. And instead of doing like this quick scan, okay, what do I want to do? Okay, I don't know what I want to do. They would literally just grab like the first thing closest to them and sit down and start to build or start to pretend play or start to make believe, or they would grab like things that I didn't even think were toys, like couch cushions, and they would stay there longer than they ever did when they were all these toys. And this amazing moment when I realized, like, oh, it was not that they needed help mild playing, or even that they needed to grow up, it was that they needed help not being overwhelmed. So, like, really practically, because I know the question is your head, like, okay, how do I actually do that tomorrow? Literally, I think in terms of active toys, not total to not total toys. And by the way, if I I kept basically everything in the back of the basement, if my kid really it wasn't really organized, okay. I like thought before I did this I was gonna put them all in bins, like, oh, all the Star Wars toys are gonna go here and all the magnetiles are gonna go here, whatever. No, I literally just put everything. In black trash bags and put it in the back. Made it impossible for me to find stuff when my kids did call out, like, oh, where is this one specific thing? It's fine, I'll get to that in a moment. But um literally, you don't have to count everything that you own or anything like that. There's no like limit. Just think about what is possible to even play with. So good rule of thumb, although I hate that phrase, is like eight to twelve toys. Period. That's it. I'm not talking about individual toys, but I'm talking about like types of toys, like maximum 12. I really like like six to eight, really. I the reason I have eight to twelve is because I have like four kids. So like sometimes they're playing with different things. And they don't all need to be like big or elaborate things either, right? Simpler is better. Blocks, again, little characters, figurines. Um, art supplies this thing that's always out at our house, just simple markers, uh, things that can become multiple things, right? Think open-ended. So we had this like loose. I put all the magnetiles in the back because that was just tripping over them all day. And I didn't throw them away or anything because like those do come out time to time, but somehow I missed this one lone green magnetile for a while, and it became this grass block. And so it was like a plot of land for like a Lego guy, and then it was a meal at one point for like imaginary dinosaurs, and like they would feed it to me when I pretended to be like a horse, and like 20, like probably 20 or 30 other things that I can't even remember, because they had this like open-ended way of viewing toys, and they just engaged way more. So when you think of open-ended toys, just think of like things that that can become so many different things versus closed toys, which are often actually most of the toys that we get today. And this is this is not like they're not universally bad. Like a Lego set with instructions is kind of a closed-end toy. So, like, I'm not saying that they're like terrible, but they tend to, if your kid already struggles with attention, lead to much quicker drop-off. And then tip two, um, I would say those open-ended toys, I wound up putting basically all of what I called like the plastic junk in the back. The only thing that I organized was the open-ended toys. So I said I didn't keep them all out. So I actually had a rotation. And in one of the rooms of our house on the first floor, right off the living room, we only allow basically one type of toy to be out at a time. We call it the Lego room most often because it's usually Legos. But rotation is got is gonna be your best friend. But I'm not talking about like a complicated, like, oh, on Mondays this comes out and everything is perfectly organized. I'm talking like literally plastic bins that are like blocks, this bin, magnet tiles, this bin, uh play scarves, this bin. Although some of these things are gonna be out all the time, right? And it makes it like there's no way that I could handle the level of toy rotation that I see on Instagram. It's not a weekly system, right? Or a curated, like everything is wood-colored Montessori shelf or something, right? Like three to four, I you know what we use actually? I say plastic bins, we use these plastic totes that we got that are like collapsible. They're like zip around the top. We have one for Legos, one for Magnetiles, and one for it's just filled with matchbox cars. And um I'm trying to think, there was like a fourth one. Some sort of other magnet thing. We don't really play with it much anymore because they started getting broken. Smart Max or something? They were like these magnet two two ends of like a magnet um multicolored magnet uh tubes, kind of. And then you could put like like a horse on each end, like a the front of a horse and the back of a horse, and they're like interchangeable. Anyway, my kids wandered up you wound up using them really open-ended. So we like kept them for a while, but then they started breaking and like the paint started chipping off and stuff. So anyway, so literally in our front room, we only have one of those at a time. And when it's time to clean up, I don't know if it's organized, this goes there, like literally everything goes back in that tote, and like the kids help me with it because it's very simple, and then we put it away, and we either have nothing, which by the way, nothing is a is an awesome tool, is an awesome toy. Like, nothing is incredible toys for kids. Like they just open world, right? World building is the thing. Like, they've been into this where like there are many weeks that go by where like no toys come out in that area, and like sometimes sticks and rocks and stuff come in, but most often it's like literally just like we just move the couch cushions here or there or whatever. So we have a very small number of toys out at a time, extremely limited. Um, and then that's it, right? And then in my kids' room, now I'm gonna like out myself. We basically don't have any toys in rooms either, except that my four-year-old plays with my wife. They like play as like a part of their nighttime, bedtime ritual, and he has six, maybe eight of these little guys. Like one of them's like a Bowser. I know there's like a Bowser's castle, too. That's like that's like the only set. Well, not set, that's like the only arena that they could play in. And I think there's like a Spider-Man, and they're like not even the same size. There's like a there's like a Robin from Batman, and we used to have no toys, but again, he's been this is like part of our our nightly routine. And actually, interestingly, because it's so limited, he's been waking up early and playing with his older brother, they're five and four, before they even go downstairs. But but it's crazy because there are so few toys, they actually can play without fighting over them, which sounds crazy, but like the more toys you have, we know from the research, they actually more like the fight. So they have their little playroom and then just our unfinished basement, which uh has some carpeting and padding on the walls. It and that's just a space to move their body. Like there's a saucer swing and a sensory swing and beanbag chairs and blankets. And that was where we used to keep all of these toys. Now we just keep some stuffed animals down there, and uh occasionally they find we made the horrible mistake of getting like those ball pit balls at one point. Uh so occasionally they find one of those and they'll play with it for a while. Eventually those wind up in the trash because those things are a nightmare to clean up. But uh when people see this, they're like, okay, but like what do you do with gifts? Um first first things first. We've been really clear with my family and and my wife's family that we prefer experience-based gifts. My mom is awesome at this. Uh she does occasionally we'll give them like like a physical stuffed animal, but so frequently we'll get them like tickets to a Cubs game or something. It's so much better. Uh and then the other thing is that if somebody does get us a gift, I'm thinking about my um different people in my life have gotten my kids gifts, it winds up being like a grandma and grandpa's house gift. Right? Or eventually after the novelty wakes up, it where it winds up in the back part of the basement. Um, and then my third tip, if those are kind of my two big overarching tips, my third one is you have to build up your own tolerance of your kids being bored because uh I think a lot of parents intervene too quickly. Like if your child walks into a room and they hesitate and say, I'm bored, because again, they've been conditioned to do that, and you jump in with suggestions and solutions and entertainment, um you're actually just uh kind of uh l conditioning them to feel that way, if that makes sense. The first like 10-minute window after they walk into a new space or or a space where they haven't decided what to do yet, their brain is literally recalibrating in that moment. They're moving from, and they have to move, like once they've always been either overwhelmed or told, and like so many kids spend so much time being led by adults. This is not the type of topic of this episode, but man, kids need so much more child-directed time because they literally don't know what to do if an adult isn't telling them what to do. So they have to literally move from, okay, tell me what to do mindset to I'm going to generate something myself. And if you can hold that space without fixing it for like literally five to 10 minutes, what you're gonna see is something very magical happen. Uh like you're gonna see them start to do amazing things. And this kind of goes with like you like you should expect some resistance, but understand, if your child is used to these high stimulation toys and lots of toys and lots of screens and lots of novelty, and constantly you directing all of it all the time, like simplifying the environment is going to trigger some loss aversion in them at first. It's just withdrawal, right, from the constant input. But that is going to pass, and it's gonna pass way quicker because kids' brains are more plastic and they're they're wired for independent imaginative play. And here's like the deeper part of all of this. Like you can, if you if you can truly adopt this mindset, then your home stops being about the toys at all and it becomes about play and building identity and building like a kid. Like a kid will your kid will grow up in an environment that instead of it's constantly just feeding them options, they'll learn like to depend on themselves, right? Instead of I need something new constantly to feel engaged, like I need the next video on my feed, or I need the next thing to buy to feel valuable, or I need something external that's gonna hold my attention. Like when your kid grows up, I am convinced when your kid grows up in a space with fewer overwhelming inputs, with a room where they can get bored and move through that portum and create amazing things, which by the way, no toy that you're ever gonna get your kid is gonna be better than their imagination. Like, understand that. Then they learn that they can generate ideas from within themselves. They can create, they can, and that identity, that sense of capability, right? Confidence. I can control. Like I'm not alone with myself. Like that does not just lead to better play, it leads to better minds. And one day, not too soon, not too long in the future, it's not gonna be about toys at all. It's gonna be about school, and it's gonna be about work, and it's gonna be about relationships. And the ability to sit with something hard and not constantly escape into the easier thing, the ability to focus in a world that is constantly designed to pull you away and distract you. Like, if you're feeling this with me, if you've walked into that room and thought, like, how are they bored right now? You're not missing something. You're actually seeing something very real. And the answer cannot be to add more, it has to be to create space. That's it for today. If you like this stuff, make sure that you share this and do all the things in the outro. Catch in the next one. Thank you for your time listening to the whole parent podcast today. I hope you got something out of it. I have a couple quick favors to ask of you as we end the episode. The first one is to jump over on whatever podcast platform that you are listening to right now and rate this show five stars. You'll notice there are a lot of five-star ratings on this show, whether that's on Spotify or Apple Music or Apple Podcasts. We have a ton of five-star ratings and it helps our podcast get out to more people than almost any other parenting podcast out there. And so it's a really quick thing that you can do if you have 15 or 20 seconds. And if you have an additional 30 seconds, I'd love to read a review from you. I read all the reviews that come through. If some if you particularly like one part of the podcast or you like when I talk about something or whatever, imagine that you're writing that review directly to me. The second thing that you can do is go and send this episode to somebody in your life who you think could use it. Think about all the parents in your life. Think about your friends, your family members who could use a little bit of help parenting. It's vulnerable to share an episode of a parenting podcast with them. I get it. But imagine how much better your life is as a result of listening to this podcast, of following me on social media, of getting the emails that I send out. You can share that with someone else too. And so I encourage you, just go over, shoot them a quick text, share this episode with them, or share another episode that you feel like is particularly relevant to them. The last thing you can do is go down to the link show notes at the bottom. And like I said, in the mid-roll, you can subscribe on Substack. It's$5 a month or$50 a year. Uh I don't have that many people doing it, and yet the people who are doing it have made this possible. And so if you like this episode, if you like all of the episodes, if you want them to continue, the only way that I can keep making them is through donor support, free will donations to the podcast. Please, please, please, please, as you're thinking about the end of this year, as you're thinking about your charitable giving. I know I'm not a 501c3. You can't write it off on your taxes, but if you'd like to give me a little gift to just say thank you for what you've done this year, the best way to do that is over on Substack. Again,$5 a month,$50 a year. It's not gonna break the bank. It's probably less than you spend on coffee every week. Definitely less than you spend on coffee every week. Maybe uh less than you spend on almost anything, right? Five bucks a month is very, very small, but it goes a long way when it's multiplied by all of the different people who listen to the podcast and sending that over to me. I get all of that money. It's just my way of being able to produce the podcast. Spend money on equipment, spend money on subscription fees, hosting fees for the podcast, all of that stuff. Email server fees, all that. So if you're willing to do that, I would love it. Thank you so much for listening to this episode, and I'll see you next time.