On Play with Dr Tovah Klein

Dr. Tovah Klein is a leading expert on toddlers and early childhood. As director of the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development, she’s shaped how parents and educators understand the earliest years. She’s the author of How Toddlers Thrive and has taught the children of Sarah Jessica Parker, Robert De Niro, and Amy Schumer—who wrote the introduction to her book Raising Resilience. A black-and-white pregnancy portrait by Annie Leibovitz hangs in her office, taken while Klein was teaching her daughter. It’s a quiet nod to her stature—but she’s not here for accolades. She’s here to advocate for children, for play, and for giving kids the space to become whole people.

Dr. Tovah Klein spends her days with toddlers, not just watching them play but studying what play actually means. At the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development, where she serves as director, she helps decode the invisible architecture of childhood, those quiet, formative moments that end up shaping a person’s sense of self.

“If you think about the world young children live in,” she told us, “it’s a world of play.” There’s no line between pretending and becoming, between dressing up and growing into. Play, she said, is development.

Which makes the toy aisle feel a lot less neutral.

We spoke with Dr. Klein about gender in play—why it matters, how early it starts, and what messages get embedded in the smallest of choices. She sees it in how we respond to behavior. When a toddler bites, boys are disciplined. Girls are pathologized. “What’s wrong with her?” we ask. With boys, the response is: “We have to nip that.” Same action, different assumptions.

She sees it in emotion too. “'Be a big boy’ means don’t show emotion,” she said. “Girls get more sympathy. We encourage them to nurture babies. We reinforce those behaviors through toys and through how we respond to them.”

It’s not just what’s given—it’s what’s withheld. “Parents will say, ‘Oh, we don’t have any dolls at home.’ Especially if the first child is a boy. But if it’s a girl? They almost always do.” Even if she doesn’t play with them, the dolls are there. Present. Available. “And when you have both boys and girls, there’s often more access to a wider range of toys,” Klein noted. “But toy stores are so gendered. It didn’t used to be this way.”

The issue isn’t just pink versus blue. It’s about emotional permission. Who gets to care. Who gets to explore. “If the kitchen is near the blocks, more boys will play there,” she explained. “If it’s near the strollers, the divide widens.” Placement matters. So does what’s modeled. “When boys see their dads cooking, reading, nurturing—they absorb that. But if they never see a dad doing it at home, why would they think it's for them?”

That question keeps looping in my head. Why would they think it’s for them?

Because what we give our children—the stories, the toys, the responses—becomes what they imagine for themselves. And imagination is the seed of identity.

“If you can’t imagine being something, it’s hard to become it,” Dr. Klein told us. “That’s why representation matters. That’s why play matters.”

We like to think of toys as trivial. But the patterns start early. And once they’re set, they can be hard to undo. “By kindergarten, if boys are on one side and girls on the other, the message is already clear,” Klein said. “And then they stop imagining. They stop reaching.”

That’s not a toy problem. That’s a culture problem. And it’s a reminder that how we play—what we offer, what we model, what we affirm—has everything to do with what kids will one day believe they can be.