Educational toys a waste of money?

According to a new report most of them are:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1577875,00.html

We bought a few for DD.  Yeah, I'd agree, they're a waste.  Most important is giving them room to explore and seeing what THEY gravitate to.

:Next month, the toy manufacturer Leapfrog will produce an electronic aid which it claims will teach babies aged just 12 months old to be bilingual."

Um, yeah... right. 

Any 12-mo I know would just chew on it, if they bothered to play with it at all.

I have ZERO faith in toys that are supposed to teach language electronically. It's been proven that babies don't learn language from TV, so why would they learn it from an electronic gizmo?

Frankly, the only thing that really teaches language is actually spending time reading and talking to them. I tried to read to my baby when he was really, really small. He just chewed on the books, and, I'll admit it was a boring exercise for everyone. But! Guess what I DID do? I read all the time, myself. Kids see what you're doing and they want to do it, too. So, Becket had a great interest in books. Now that he's 16 months, he wants to sit in my lap and listen to me read books.

The key is to make them interactive. You can have a lot of fun with stuff like "Can you point to the duck? Where is the duck? That's it! That's the duck!"

I can keep him busy with, "Becket, where is your ball? Go find your ball! There it is! Bring mommy the ball!" "What is this? What do you call this? A car! That's right! Go find the other car!" These sorts of word drills really entertain him.

Other than that, he's mostly interested in trying to put lids on things and pulling things out of cupboards.

The best toy my son has ever had is tupperware. I've never bought educational toys because I figured that I'd be the one doing the educating. Oh no wait - - - he does have one toy that has a big monkey shaped button on it that speaks spanich and english, but the only reason he has it is because come on! A monkey shaped button!!!

Yeah well don't I feel like a numpty. Just spent HOW MUCH?? on a ton of developmental toys for his birthday and of course his favourite one is the simplest - the abacus and apart from that his favourite game is pulling everything out of the kitchen cupboards.

Ohio, it's definitely true what you say about reading. I can still remember being desperate to read my dad's newspaper. I mean I was DESPERATE to know what it said and so my mum taught me to read when I was 4.  Ethan is the same with our books and newspapers. Whatever we're reading, he wants to grab it and see what it is.

I always bought my kids educational toys. Jordan took really well to them and I believe as a result he is now a computer geeky kid.
Brett had Jordan's hand me down toys but wasnt interested in the least.
Coby always played with his educational toys but Jack is only interested in things he can chew on and throw.
Guess it depends on the childrens individual personalities.

'Some parents don't have as much time to sit down and play with their children as they would wish and buy these toys hoping to make up for that. But nothing can replace the value for a child of spending time a parent.'

Ifn you want your kids to be intelligent, then spend as much time as you can with them, paying attention to them and interacting with them. Everything else will follow.

Re reading and setting examples and newspapers - it's too bad there's no Sunday comics here and the one that does exists sucks. But even at that, every Sunday my daughter asks for 'her' paper and I give her the Funday Times and she looks at it while my husband and I read the paper.

Calvin has his fair share of educational toys, but he loves exploring most... so we let him, as much as possible. he is content with a container with lentils in it to shake! how many of us were brought up and turned out just fine, intelligent, etc without these toys? i'd venture to say all of us. i'm not against educational toys at all, but i dont think they should be used to subsitute a parents role in learning, etc.

my 2 cents
...

DS's favorite toy is the box I get when I buy the mega package of diapers.  But lately he's taken to clearing out the cuboard and sitting inside with the door closed.  I gave him a flashlight the other day and he was in there for 2 hrs peeking his head out for a game of peek-a-boo every so often.