With the gift-giving season and toy-buying mania upon us, the media are filled with toy ads and toy buying guides.

The "Toy Story" recently featured in the Star-Telegram and on KDFW/Fox 4 was typical: A group of young children, in this case at Cook Children's Medical Center, test some of the year's most highly publicized toys. The reactions of these "toy experts" are published to give toy-buying parents clues as to what would be most prized by their own children.

That's one approach to selecting toys. Here's the rest of the story.

Toys matter. Children learn through play. What children know about themselves and their world, they learn through play.

During the past 20 years, a sea change has occurred in what they are learning and what their toys are teaching them.

In the past, children's play and play materials tended to be open-ended and interactive. When the weather was good, children were outside, using found materials or simple toys, often moving freely from one house to another within the neighborhood.

Today, neighborhood play is restricted by concerns about safety and by economic pressures that have sent most adults into the work force. There is increasing pressure on children's performance on achievement tests, causing both parents and teachers to limit free play time for younger and younger children.

But perhaps the biggest change in children's play has been in toys themselves.

Open-ended play materials like blocks and art materials have been replaced by highly structured or realistic toys, often derived directly from TV shows or movies. These toys are designed to be used in only one way. They squelch creativity, imagination and problem-solving skills in children.

Children have become easily bored and dependent on toys to show them how to play.

A new toy may produce great excitement for its entertainment value, but this quickly fades, and the toy makes its way to the bottom of the toy box within a few days, or even hours.

Screen time comes in many forms: video games, TV, movies, computer games. For the most part, screen time is passive and solitary. Interactions are electronic rather than human.

Children need to become computer literate, but they also must develop in other areas. Social skills and emotional intelligence are crucial to children's success in school. Physical strength and flexibility must be developed in early childhood for lifelong health, and to combat the alarming increase in childhood obesity.

Children are exposed to more than 40,000 commercials a year during their normal TV viewing, according to a 2003 report from Concerned Educators Allied for a Safe Environment in Cambridge, Mass.

Those are the direct ads. Then there are the indirect ads and cross marketing. Cartoons and TV programs often are in themselves ads for toys based on the shows, and vice versa.

What is the purpose of a toy based on a cartoon character? For the child to learn? Or for the child to watch more cartoons?

Are children really in the position to judge what toy is best for them?

What's worse, much of the programming targeted to children is filled with violence, and the toys are designed to be used for fighting or attacking an opponent. (The average child will witness 10,000 acts of violence on TV in a year, says the 1997 University of California's National Television Violence Study.)

Adults must be the toy experts. If we judge toys on what children are learning, what might we add to the toy story?

• Do we need a mechanical recorded voice to tell a child how to play with the toy?

• Do we want to encourage children to act out what they've seen on television, or to bring their own ideas to their play?

• Do we want toys with only one purpose -- launching an object at an opponent -- or toys whose use is limited only by a child's imagination?

Look for toys that:

• Can be used in a variety of ways and let children decide what to do.

• Grow with the child and have continuing value.

• Can be used with other toys for more complex play.

• Promote respectful, nonstereotyped, nonviolent interactions.

• Add a new dimension beyond a child's current toys.

Avoid toys that:

• Can only be used one way, defined by the toy designer, or perform actions for the child.

• Appeal primarily to a single age or developmental stage.

• Will probably sit on a shelf after the first fun half hour.

• Will channel children into imitating TV or movie scripts and lure them into watching more media.

• Are limited to sedentary and solitary activity.

Play is a child's right, but protecting it is everyone's responsibility.