Toy slime—it honestly doesn’t sound that fun to me on the face of it. Rather, it seems like too much of a mess. That’s why tons of parents ban it from their homes despite their kids’ pleas for this goopy, droopy plaything.
Y’all who don’t like slime just need to spend an afternoon making and playing with it like I did with my girls. I get the craze now, and as long as you set apart a dedicated “slime zone,” I see no reason to deprive your kids of it. Allow me to pass on why kids are so obsessed with slime. The future of their play (and yours) is at stake, so read closely.
Making Slime Is an Adventure
In the beginning, simply making slime is tons of fun. It’s a science experiment that produces a toy—that’s rare. It’s a simple one, too. All your kiddos need is glue and borax, although they can add almost anything else they want including dye and foam beads.
Getting their slime right is also the perfect lesson in persistence. The challenge of getting the glue-to-borax ratios right takes keen measurements and trial-and-error, and mastery of both are the marks of a good scientist. There’s little else more fulfilling than when your child gets their recipe right and can show off to friends and family.
It’s Sensory Fun
Once it’s made, playing with slime means engaging in almost every sense. Your kids can smell that distinct gluey smell (or they can add in a custom scent), squeeze it through their hands, hear it pop and squelch, and see it change shape. For some extra interaction, learn how to blow bubbles in your slime. As long as your kids don’t eat it (the forbidden sense among the five), slime gives them the pleasure of a full sensory experience. There’s nothing that behaves quite like it.
It Grounds Them
My final thought on why kids are so obsessed with slime is that this toy grounds them in reality as few modern favorites do. I can remember a time when play was primarily physical rather than virtual, but my kids don’t. That’s why I say let your kids slime. Because it involves all these senses, it’s the most tangible form of play I can think of.
This physicality grounds them. Parents I know say it’s calming for their kids for this reason, while some counselors even use slime in play therapy with their kid clients. It’s a wonderful, even counter-cultural, thing that gets your kids more in touch with themselves than other activities.
