Toy Trains Teach Children Life Lessons

Toy trains offer a magical perspective of life for many children. Boys tend to play with them more than girls do, but almost universally toy trains are loved and treasured.

Why is that? What is the fascination with toy trains? Which ones should you buy as a gift, and which ones should be avoided? What does a toy train mean to a child? Can playing with toy trains help teach kids cooperation? Can little kids learn to follow instructions more accurately by learning how trains operate?

There are no perfect answers to any of these questions, but still they are important and helpful to look at, especially for parents with a kid who adores toy trains.

Let us take a look at Thomas the Train for a moment. This is by far the most popular train/character for the younger crowd of train lovers. The Thomas franchise has cornered the market on trains with human personalities.

The world of Thomas the Train is huge, busy, fun, and filled with lessons. Each train/character has a unique job and a special purpose. A child who plays with Thomas the train is not just playing with a train, he or she enters a huge new world and is laying down tracks to learning about friendships and relationships.

Thomas the Train lives and works on the mythical island of Sodor, and so every child then has a special place to visit in their imagination when playing with Thomas toy trains. This new world, this endless field of possiblity is one of the reason's children love to play with toy trains. And Thomas the Tank Engine directly helps foster the ability to get alogn with others because of the lessons Thomas learns in the books. Thomas is always learning something new in every book.

But also, playing with Thomas, and with almost any other toy train is a great way to improve cooperation simply because of the symbolism involved.

The reason toy trains teach children about cooperation is simple: Trains need more than one person to run and to organize. Playing with toy cars is different because all you need is one driver. But playing with toy trains can lend itself to cooperative efforts like no other toys out there.

Kids are fascinated by the motion of a train and the way the fit together. Tehre fore, trains teach the power of staying in a line during an outing. You need an engine, middle cars, passengers and a caboose. By playing with trains, kids learn as if by osmosis the importance of following and keeping on track.

This ability will help on any field trips, on family outings, on class projects and any time when following and cooperation is needed. The lessons kids learn by playing with toy trains can go far beyond what is on the surface. But you must be open to such lessons, and be willing to help your child open to them also.