Baby Drivers: What Playing with Remote Control Cars Teaches Kids

A 2016 Toy Industry Association study revealed that the average American household contains about 70 toys. It also revealed that the average American child receives roughly $6,500 worth of toys throughout their childhood.

These stats would seem to suggest that kids have more than enough toys to keep them occupied. But as any parent will tell you, most kids don’t actually play with the majority of their toys. They end up stuck at the bottom of a toy box or stuffed in the back of a closet.

You won’t have to worry about this happening when you give your kids remote control cars. They’ll love playing with their outdoor RC cars over and over again and won’t ever get tired of them.

Your kids will learn a lot while they’re playing with their cars, too. Here are a few things that remote control cars can teach kids.

Motor Skills

If your kids are on the younger side, one of the things that you’re probably concerned about is pushing them to develop their fine motor skills. It’s incredibly important for young kids to develop these skills before they start attending school.

You can help your kids develop their fine motor skills by encouraging them to take part in activities that will teach them to use the small muscles located in parts of their bodies like their fingers, hands, and wrists. Here are some activities that will lead to motor skill development:

• Holding items that are on the smaller side
• Writing with crayons, markers, pencils, and other writing instruments
• Buttoning up jeans, shirts, and other pieces of clothing
• Cutting paper with a pair of scissors
• Typing on a computer keyboard

Playing with remote control cars like Traxxas RC cars is another way that you can motivate your kids to work on their motor skills without them even realizing it. While they’re driving an RC car around, they’ll be using their fingers, hands, and wrists to push the buttons that make it go.

The more your kids play with the cars, the more their motor skills will develop. You’ll see noticeable improvements in them over time and be proud of the work they’re putting in.

Hand-Eye Coordination

Playing with remote control cars will do more than just develop your child’s fine motor skills. It’ll also develop their hand-eye coordination.

Hand-eye coordination refers to a person’s ability to perform tasks that require them to use their hands and their eyes at the same time. Someone who struggles with hand-eye coordination will have a tough time catching a ball that’s thrown at them or playing video games.

Making improvements to your child’s hand-eye coordination is important for a number of reasons. It’ll allow them to participate in youth sports. It’ll also improve their handwriting and make it easier for them to read.

You can teach your kids all about hand-eye coordination — without actually forcing them to sit through boring lessons — by handing them a remote control car and letting them go wild with it.

At first, they might crash the car into just about everything in sight. They might also fail miserably when it comes to avoiding obstacles that get in their way.

But within just a few days, most kids will start to develop better hand-eye coordination overall. They’ll be able to navigate their way through obstacle courses with ease as soon as they get the hang of driving an RC car around.

Cause and Effect

Another thing that kids will learn while they’re busy playing with outdoor RC cars is the concept of cause and effect. Most young kids don’t understand that the actions they take will usually have some kind of effect on the world around them.

They’ll see cause and effect take place right in front of them when they’re driving RC cars around, though. Every time they fail to make a turn properly and slam into a curb, a tree, or a wall as a result of it, they’ll see the impact that their actions are having.

Even something as simple as seeing a remote control car move when you push a button on a controller will amaze most kids. Their little faces will light up when they see how they’re able to manipulate their car to do what they want it to do.

Sharing

There are quite a few kids who don’t like to share. It doesn’t matter if they’re asked to share food, clothing, or their toys. They will steadfastly refuse to share things with other people, no matter how hard you try to get them to do it.

Studies have shown that there are actually scientific reasons for this. By the time most kids reach the age of 4 or 5, they have a firm understanding of the concept of ownership. As a result, they will turn down the opportunity to share something with someone else when given the opportunity to do so.

If you’re having a tough time teaching your child about the value of sharing, buying them a remote control car might just do the trick. You can use the car as a tool to teach your kids how to share with other people of all ages.

Initially, your child might be unwilling to give up their car when someone asks them to play with it. But you can take advantage of the fact that they don’t know how to use the car and tell them that you would like to take control of the car to teach them how to do it.

This will show your child that there are benefits that come along with them being open to sharing. You can also encourage your child to share their RC car with other kids and tell them how proud you are of them when they do it.

Responsibility

When you first give your child a remote control car, it’s a good idea for you to tell them about the big responsibility that comes with it. Explain that the RC car is not like most of their other toys and talk to them about how they’re going to have to take good care of it.

First and foremost, you should let your child know that the remote control car should not, under any circumstances, be left outside when they’re done playing with it. Speak to them about how someone could steal it if it’s left unattended and about how the weather can affect it.

You should also let your child know that they’re going to need to work hard to keep their remote control car clean. From wiping it down with a rag to touching up any missing paint (you can obviously help with that!), there are a lot of things that will need to be done to keep an RC car looking its best.

It’ll be up to your child to take the necessary steps to maintain their new car.

Engineering

There has been a big push all across the country to get kids more interested in engineering. There is a demand for more workers in the engineering field, so many school districts throughout the U.S. are pushing kids to get more involved in engineering from a young age.

One way to teach your child about engineering is by working on a remote control car with them. Once your child starts playing with the car regularly, there will no doubt be problems that pop up that force you to take the car apart.

Rather than working on the car on your own, bring your child into the mix and let them experience how much fun it can be to take a car apart, fix it, and put it back together again. They’ll get to see what the world of engineering is all about, and who knows? They might end up loving it!

Outside of teaching your child about engineering, you can also work some math and physics lessons into their play time by using remote control cars. They can learn all about how they can use math and physics to their advantage when playing with their outdoor RC cars.

You don’t want to overdo it and make every RC car race feel like a math or science lesson. But you can do your part to open your child up to the world of math and science simply by handing them the keys to an RC car and letting them drive it around for a while.

Buy Remote Control Cars For Your Kids

Remote control cars are designed to be, above all else, fun. But they can also be teaching tools when you use them correctly.

Whether you’re looking for an RC car for a 4-year-old, an 8-year-old, or a teenager, you can find something that will fit just about any age group. And it won’t take very long to see the big impact that an RC car can have on a child once you see how much they’re able to learn from it.

Check out our blog to find more useful tips on teaching your kids valuable lessons throughout their young lives.