Repetition is an important part of how children learn, and the combination of simple lyrics put to music is how we have taught babies and young children since prehistoric times. Every culture has a catalogue of songs passed from the old to the young, passing on oral history and teaching the life skills a child needs in everyday life.

Messy bedrooms, playrooms and family rooms create lots of stress for adults and children. The skills and understanding to organise and maintain collections of toys take many years to develop and the fact that parents feel overwhelmed by the mess shows that children are often unable to deal with the clutter independently.

Organised toy storage is certainly part of the solution but before organising you must first declutter. And that means taking a closer look at the main culprits sabotaging your efforts to maintain previous systems and routines.

Let's take a look at that mess and identify the likely suspects. They might surprise you!

In the past, expectant first-time mothers would use the months of pregnancy to prepare a Layette. This might involve hand-sewing, knitting and crocheting every garment their baby would wear. Hand-me-down items like nappies, bassinets, cots and high chairs would be gathered from family and neighbours and grandparents would splash out to purchase a pram to demonstrate to those family and friends how affluent they were. Those not so affluent would refurbish pre-loved prams with a good scrub, repairs and replacement wheels foraged from the local tip! Things were made to last, simple to repair and passed around between families across generations.

These days, the market for baby “needs” is beyond anything my grandparents could imagine. Women no longer withdraw from paid work upon marriage or at the first hint of pregnancy but continue to earn up to and beyond the birth of their baby, with paid maternity leave available in many countries. Our culture has switched from a frugal society of make-do-and-mend 100 years ago to a consumption model influenced by trends and fashion. And the products considered essential for pregnancy, newborns and new mothers is marketing-led, not need-based.

Gross Motor Skills development is mapped out in a predictable timeline for all neuro-typical infants. Babies reach what we refer to as milestones as their neurological development progresses from head to toe in the first year.

Babies learn through experience - they repeat a process until it becomes automatic and then move on to the next. We don't teach babies these skills. Instincts drive development. No matter how enthusiastically you model walking to your six month old or support them in an upright position, they cannot walk until they are developmentally ready.

Walk into the toy section of any store and you will be overwhelmed by an array of bright, shiny offerings, each promising to be everything you need to entertain a child for hours.

So why is it your child complains of boredom while being surrounded by discarded and unloved playthings?

Like most adults, my childhood memories of play generally occurred outdoors. With the freedom of children in the 1970s, my friends and our siblings roamed not only our neighbourhood on the Mornington Peninsula but also the undeveloped land surrounding us, where remnant bushland and retired farmland gave us unlimited connection with nature and unsupervised play opportunities from a young age - the instructions to "look after your brother/sister" and "be home before its dark" rang in our ears as we raced out the door.