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grandparents or bachelor uncles have given. “Shouldn’t we keep these as insurance for grandmother’s next visit?” Chances are, I assure them, grandmother has no memory of the toy itself, only the joy of giving. Chances are also good that the child has forgotten the toy too, or the toy has one or more of its pieces missing.
    In this way, we make a molehill out of a mountain, leaving for the child a mix of toys that they enjoy most consistently, and for the longest periods of time. Rarely are these favorites complex, or motorized; rarely do they “do” anything. The toys that are too detailed or complicated—too “fixed”—can rob a child of an imaginative experience. Dear nighttime toys can never disappear. Even if they are totally hideous, dear nighttime toys are nonnegotiable. The remaining toys have to include a mixture of active toys: building, digging, construction toys; and more receptive toys, such as dolls and stuffed animals, toys that just receive.There can also be creative materials, such as paints, crayons, and some modeling substances, such as beeswax or clay. The toys with staying power are usually—not always, but pretty consistently—figures of some sort, either dolls or knights or stuffed animals; building toys; and scenes or dwellings of some sort, into which the child loves to project his or her figures, and thus themselves.
    We then turn our attention to books, whittling the pile down to one or two of the current favorites. This can truly shock some parents who take pride in their child’s love of reading. “Sarah reads five or six books at once!” they implore. Our purpose here is not to discourage reading, but to allow the child to really concentrate on, and revel in, whatever they are reading (or doing) at any given time. I remember Dylan, a very bright, talkative eight-year-old who once started our conversation with this excited pronouncement: “You know what? I just finished number sixteen in the Magic Tree House Series, I’m on the fourth Time Warp Trio, and I just got the new Captain Underpants.” “Well,” I said, “which of those did you particularly enjoy?” “Oh, I don’t know,” he said, clearly thinking my question was beside the point, “they’re all pretty much the same.”
    So, with a few large baskets, we had culled Marie’s toys way down. The remaining toys were a mix of favorites, the simpler the better: dolls, building toys, cherished bedtime toys, some kitchen things, balls. Almost half of the toys that did not make the cut were thrown away because they were broken or had missing pieces. The rest we put in storage. The stored toys were a sort of toy “library” that the family could draw from provided they replaced one before taking another. We did the same with books, packing and labeling the majority of them for storage, and leaving five or six of favorites, lined neatly on a shelf by Marie’s bed.
    We didn’t just take away toys, we carefully added some. In one of the baskets we put a stack of brightly colored fabric pieces, some rope, and clothespins. We also made sure Marie had a table her size, a large drawing pad, and a box of big crayons. We gathered, washed, and folded an assortment of dress-up clothes that we put in one empty basket.
    You might think Marie’s first reaction to this “anti-Christmas” would be shock. Not so. I have seen this again and again. She didn’t seem to notice, or care, that a good three-quarters or more of her toys and books had been removed. She was taken with the new space, with the freedom it seemed to afford. For days and days she built “houses” with the cloths and clothespins. She would build them and curl up inside,pulling in pillows and sometimes a book or a doll. Every single day for a couple of weeks she repeated this, and it seemed to be doing something for her that she really needed. She came to trust that she could build another the next day, that these were hers to make and have. So each afternoon,