Page No – 233-239
Afsaneh Khajevand Khoshali
Islamic Azad University- Gorgan Branch
The present study attempts to show the difference in preference and use of
toys, play material and/or game equipments in children with mentally challenged.
A sample of 140 children with mild and moderate mentally challenged between
chronological ages of 6-18 years and mental ages of 3-12 years. The sample
included 71 boys and 69 girls. The results indicate that the toy preferences of
children with mentally challenged appear to be restricted to very few items,
such as, ball, cycle, doll, wooden blocks, colour pencils, toy car, play ring,
marbles, etc. A great variety of easy available toys like beads, buttons, zip,
balloons, nuts, bolts, dice, etc., do not form the armamentarium of toys for
these children. This calls for the need to propagate use of interesting toys (a
euphemism for teaching aids) that are safe, sturdy, accessible, durable, nontoxic,
portable, user-friendly, age appropriate and above all-‘teaching task’oriented. It is generally seen that there are increasing number of toys used by
older children than their younger age peers. The children with mild mentally
challenged appear to make greater use of toys than children with moderate
mentally challenged. Mothers with college education appear to show predilection
to influence use of a variety of toys in their children as compared to parents with
school education. Children of middle aged mothers between 30-39 years appear
to show greater use of a variety of toys as against younger mothers below 29
years and older mothers above 40 years.