Food for Thought: Matchbox Cars vs iPhone

So I was at the Dr.s with my son waiting for him to be seen and my son was acting up. He was running around and every few minutes I had to get up and chase him back into the waiting room and back to our seats. (He certainly had ants in his pants that day.) I was really considering handing him my iPhone so he could play a game but up until that point he hadn’t been introduced to the phone as a temp babysitter and I wasn’t of the mindset that I wanted to go there. After an hr of waiting and running around another mother looked over at me and with a smile said, “You don’t have any Matchbox Cars in your purse do you?” I said, “Is it that obvious?” She smiled again and started to tell me that she had 3 very busy boys, one about the age of 10 which happen to have been sitting next to her this day. She went on to say that when they were my son’s age (almost 2) she always kept a few Matchbox Cars in her purse and that it helped a great deal when these situations arose. Since then I haven’t left the house without at lease two in my purse: one for him and one for me. I am so grateful for her openness and suggestion. We have so much more fun while waiting for any appointments these days without my son running from one end to the other or getting into mischief of one thing or another. And though my handbag isn’t gigantic I have collected a couple of small fun games we can play together as well; one of them being a mini ring toss game and another a miniature deck of cards. Both we got in gifted Christmas crackers from England… it’s a bit corny but they work and are fairly easy to find.