Community Spotlight: Play It Forward

May 09, 2024

Allow us to present Play it Forward Toy Library, an expansion of the Miami-Dade Public Library System in South Florida. This endeavor is dedicated to making play accessible to every family, regardless of their financial circumstances. At Play It Forward, toys can be rented free of charge for children of all ages, from infants to those up to 10 years old, mirroring the standard book lending process. This innovative play hub resonates with our core principles: promoting enjoyable and educational play that fosters child development while being mindful of our environmental impact. Founded by Abby Peskin, a child psychologist and advocate for universal play access, we recently had the opportunity to learn about the library’s origins, toy renting process, and ongoing mission during an insightful interview with Abby herself.

PT: How does one rent toys from Play It Forward? 

AP: Families can rent a toy from Play it Forward at the Main Branch of the Miami-Dade library – at 101 West Flagler St, Florida. Toys can be returned to any of the 50 branches of the library throughout the county. We are hopeful that in the next few months kids will be able to reserve and borrow toys from any of the branches (shipped from the Main Branch), which will allow more kids access to the toys.

Play It Forward’s rental bag 

How does one donate?

From both families and brand

• Families can donate toys right now through our monthly donation events! We try to spread the word about these far and wide, but if families follow our Instagram, @playitforwardsfl, we announce our events there. If families have toys they want to donate and they don’t see an event posted, they can always email [email protected] and I will keep them posted about our upcoming events.
• Brands can donate toys by sending us an email at [email protected]. We usually have brands send toys to our main branch library, but I also like to meet with brands first to create a relationship. 

Braille Alphabet A-Z – Available at the library

What type of products are you looking for?

We are looking for toys that are durable, safe, and can be reused and enjoyed by many different children over the toy’s life. We love wooden toys because they’re also more possible to repair, but we additionally like those made of durable plastic, and occasionally metal (e.g., hot wheels). We cannot accept toys made of fabric (e.g., they are too difficult to clean effectively), those that are too large (e.g., play kitchen set – they are difficult for families to transport), or those that are broken or excessively worn. To align with our mission of providing developmentally supportive toys, we do not accept toys where guns or weapons are the focus (e.g., toy soldiers, NERF), as we find it important to communicate to children that weapons are not toys. We additionally do not accept toys that are primarily for outdoor play (e.g., soccer balls, scooters, etc.), as they tend to be more worn than indoor toys after few usages. We cannot accept bath or water toys, as they are challenging to clean to prevent mold, which presents a threat to the health of the children borrowing them. We also cannot accept board games or large cardboard puzzles at this time, as the number of pieces is difficult to maintain, and without all of the pieces the toy is often no longer functional. Toys we LOVE that are difficult to find second hand include: toys for children with disabilities, toys that support learning in different languages (e.g., letter blocks from a variety of languages), wooden train tracks, Legos, character toys to go with playsets (e.g., Little People), wooden cut-apart pretend food, sensory toys (e.g., fidget toys, sensory balls).

Importantly, if you have toys that you don’t know where to donate that fall in our “can’t accept” categories above, you can still contact us! We have partnerships with some awesome organizations in the community who will accept and treasure them!

Quick checklist:

Acceptable toys:

• Wooden toys
• Durable plastic toys
• Metal cars
• Favorites: toys that are learning focused, toys that support different languages and abilities, train tracks, play sets, pretend play food, and sensory toys.

Toys that are not accepted: 

• Water toys
• Toys with fabric components
• Toy where weapons are the focus (ex: hand held toy guns or soldiers)
• Board games or cardboard puzzles
• Outdoor play toys (ex: soccer balls or scooters) 

You can still contact the library if you need support rehoming toys that are not accepted.

Abby sorting through donations 

It is not just toys; does the Toy Library take monetary donations?

We absolutely accept monetary donations (and those interested can donate on our website – playitforwardsfl.org). Although many of the toys in our library are donated and gently used, there are other things that require monetary donations to keep us running, including:

1. Gas cards for volunteers so they can drive around the county picking up toys and running toy donations.
2. Durable storage for the toys so they can travel back and forth from the library intact.
3. Cleaning materials to effectively sanitize the toys when they return to the library.
4. Replacement materials for toy sets that get lost, damaged, etc.
5. Maintain our website so we can host information about the library as well as the toy catalog. We also love our volunteers, but we are hoping to be able to pay some of those hard-working volunteers soon to show our appreciation for the work they do.

What is your background?

My mom was a second grade and kindergarten teacher (now happily retired), so I grew up around toys and young kids. When I hit high school I knew I wanted to work with kids as well, but chose psychology as my path. Throughout my 10-ish years of undergrad and grad school I worked in a variety of summer camps and preschool settings, which solidified for me the importance of explorative play for so many aspects of child development (e.g., cognitive skills, teamwork/cooperation, motor skills, problem-solving). In grad school I received my Ph.D. in clinical psychology, specializing in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), in which we coach parents in play with their children to improve the parent-child relationship and child behavior.

What made you start your toy library?

I would say there are three separate but related influences that made me start the toy library. When I was early in grad school, I participated in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, and took my little sister to museums, brought her home to cook with her, and went to the library to pick out books together. Often when I picked her up from her house and dropped her off, I noticed that the six kids there were often in front of the TV instead of playing, and my little often asked if she could bring home the toys we saw in other places like the children’s museum. This made me reflect on the impact to her development not having the disposable income to splurge on new toys. I come from a privileged background, so this was revelatory, and appeared to be a gap in resources that I could have a hand in closing.

The second influence comes from my clinical work. The first few years I was learning PCIT, patients always came to the clinic for their weekly hour-long meeting with me. In the clinic, they could play with a room full of new (to them), fun, durable, open-ended toys. We recommend that parents practice the same play at home, but I never saw the play at home until we started providing telehealth services. Then I started to see the dramatic differences between homes, with some kids having an entire room dedicated to holding their toys, and some kids having a handful of toys. This again brought to my mind how there are enough toys for every child to have open-ended play, but these toys are not distributed equally. And that increasing child access to these toys could, given studies that extoll the myriad benefits of play on development, reduce developmental disparities simply by means of increased access. 

The third influence comes from my extensive work therapeutically with children experiencing a variety of disabilities and neurodevelopmental disorders (e.g., Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, autism, ADHD, intellectual delays, seizure disorders, etc.). When we introduce toys at the child’s age level, occasionally children don’t engage with them, or find them frustrating. Sometimes it takes experimenting with different toys to figure out what a child will enjoy, and these experiments are more challenging with children who don’t communicate through speech, or have difficulty processing language because we can’t simply ask what toy they want! I’ve witnessed dramatic differences in engagement with their parent when children try out a different toy that is a better fit for them. 

From these three influences, I knew that something needed to be different. But I wasn’t sure how to make this change possible on a macro (e.g., county- or state-wide) level. Until I saw an article in The Atlantic about toy libraries. That was about five years ago, and I can’t believe how far we’ve come since then!

Robot Toolbox – Available at the library

If you want to begin your own locally, where does one start?

I think the start looks different for everyone who starts a toy library. Our first step was collecting toys as well as connecting with other existing toy libraries (in South Dakota, California, and Ohio) to research procedures that might work for us. Once we had the toys then it was a matter of finding the space to store them and a distribution system. For us, the public library was the perfect fit because it accomplished both of those needs. Some people might find that they need to have space for storage before toy collection can start. I can tell you that 200 toys eventually got pretty hard to fit into my one bedroom apartment! I found toys mostly for free on Facebook Marketplace and on other Buy Nothing Facebook groups. Some toys were more difficult to find, so I got some at Goodwill and some through a secondhand sale called Just Between Friends. 

I will say connection with other toy libraries is huge, and helped me have more legitimacy when I approached the public library to start working together because I had already mapped out our procedures. If anyone is looking to start a free lending library in their public library, I encourage them to reach out via instagram or email and we’ll see how we can support or guide. Inevitably our mission is to increase kids’ access to toys, so hopefully that will eventually look like empowering others around the world to use our same model to create libraries where they live.

What sort of directions are provided with your rented toys that are part of the same toy that you buy at the store, even if it is identical?

Right now we do not provide directions with the toys. We are working on pamphlets that will provide developmental guidance to families, but we are carefully curating this advice so as to avoid telling families how toys should be used. Our goal is that children explore the toys at their current developmental level, learning through exploration and play rather than through explicit instruction. 

Home Playset – Available at the library

What makes the Toy Library program so great?

Where do I start?? Some of my favorite things about the toy library:

We are in the public library – this allows us to reach across the county, and to distribute toys widely due to the library’s circulation system. It also makes it easier to lend the toys completely for free to families

It’s free for families to check out! Many toy libraries throughout the country and other countries around the world charge families for memberships to access toys. However, one of the main tenets of our mission is to provide access for families who don’t have the money to spend on their own toys.

We have a wide variety of toys! Some libraries choose to focus on toys for younger kids, but we know that many older kids lose interest in toys due to lack of variety and choose to focus on electronics as well. We are hoping to revive some of those kids’ excitement for toys and play!

We are on a mission to include toys for ALL kids. As we grow, we are working diligently to include toys for kids who have disabilities in our inventory. This includes braille blocks for children with visual impairments, sensory toys for children with sensory sensitivities, and adaptive switches for children with motor delays or limitations. What I love so much about this is that children with disabilities often need to borrow toys with adaptive elements from places external to where other toys are located (like legos and magnatiles). This communicates often to these kids and families that places like toy libraries aren’t for them. My goal is to incorporate both types of toys all in the same place so that kids with or without disabilities can all borrow toys that fit them best in the same place.

An assortment of some of the many toys offered in the library

Can we volunteer and donate our time to support the Toy Library?

YES! We LOVE volunteers! Right now we have lots of volunteer opportunities available as well, including creating marketing materials, hosting toy donation events, writing grants, creating a toy catalog (a physical version and an online version), connecting with other organizations in the community, cleaning and organizing toys, and attending community resource fairs to let families know about this free toy library.

How is this sustainable and promotes a circular economy?

A toy library like ours is the epitome of a circular economy. Unlike some toy libraries, we accept and LOVE gently used toys, meaning that when families are done with their toys they can donate them instead of throwing them out. Even for toys that we cannot accept, we work to partner with organizations that will use them so that nothing goes to waste. The toy library is then a circular economy with the goal of families borrowing toys and bringing them back so another family can use them – once they are in the library they continue to be circulated through the community instead of being wasted.

My Mood Memo – Available at the library

What are the benefits of renting vs. buying toys?

• Space: toys take up a lot of space in the home, and renting them can decrease the space taken up by toys.
• Financial: Renting from the public library is completely free, and families often spend hundreds of dollars on toys each year
• Quality/Durability: Often when families have less money for toys, the toys they can buy are not made as durable, and can break easily, leading them to need to purchase more. We focus on providing toys that are durable for families to borrow from the library, so they will last a longer time.
• Variety: As many parents realize, kids can get bored with toys at home. Some studies suggest that on average kids get bored with a toy after about 6 months of owning it. Then the toy just takes up space in the home, whereas if it was a library toy it could just be returned to the library for another child to enjoy.
• Try before you buy: Sometimes parents buy their children toys and the children don’t even enjoy them. If they borrow from the library first, they can experiment to see if their child will like the toy before deciding whether to purchase for the home.
• Waste/Environmental Sustainability: Often toys that are unused and unwanted end up in landfills. However, if kids borrow from the library, they can just return the toys when they are done with them rather than those toys adding to the waste

Balancing Cactus – Available at the library

Visit the Play It Forward website and follow them on social media to support the library and stay in the know about upcoming events.

For those in the South Florida area, we highly recommend making Play It Forward your go-to for exploring and renting toys. If you’re not nearby, we encourage you to be inspired by Abby and the library’s journey, seeking alternative ways to support the library and incorporate play into your life sustainably.