parent stories

STORY ONE.

The Joy of Box by Mandy Nolan.

Children love boxes. How many times have you heard a parent say, “I spent $300 on their birthday present and they played with the box.” News alert: the box is the present. The expensive large item is just a gateway gift towards an impressive and wondrous box. A box is magic. A box is not a prescriptive gift. It does not dictate use. A box is about possibility. It’s about imagining something and making it so. A box taps into our most primal creativity. Who hasn’t bought a shiny two-door fridge and thought: Wow, cracking good box!

In the box world, a fridge box is gold class. You don’t get a better box. Or bigger. A box can be a cubbyhouse. A rocket ship. A skyscraper. A car. It can be cut and painted and bent. It can be dragged into the backyard and used to entice the neighbour’s cat. It can be stuffed full of teddies and launched into space off the back deck. And later, unlike the plastic Barbie doll house it once contained, it can be used as weed control on your veggie patch.

We spend so much money indulging our kids with technology and toys, we often forget that the simplest and most powerful way to connect with their wild