LEWISTON – Jan Phillips, a professor at the University of Southern Maine’s Lewiston-Auburn College, has won an international award for her research on how children want toys and other products, and how their desires are often not founded in greed.

Phillips is the first recipient of the Outstanding Toy Research award by the International Toy Research Association and the British Toy and Hobby Association.

How children use toys and other products can say a lot about their world and their sense of empowerment, said Phillips, an associate dean and professor of social and behavioral sciences.

Children are “full partners in family consumption,” she said.

She used her own experience as research.

Years ago she and her son, Calder, then 12, were at a store. He loaded all kinds of cookies into their cart. Phillips asked why he wanted so many. He explained he needed certain brands to trade at lunch time, that only certain kinds were good for trading.

They negotiated. He got some of the cookies he wanted. Some went back on the shelf. Initially, Phillips wrote it off as peer pressure.

“Weeks later I realized he and I were constructing family right there,” she said.

How children consume is about more than wanting things out of greed. It’s about using products to help them in their social settings, just as adults do, Phillips said.

Another toy story that was part of Phillips’ research was about a woman who was surrounded by boys. Her siblings were all brothers, there were only boys in her neighborhood and her classes were full of boys. The girl asked for boys’ toys for Christmas. “Her family was dumbfounded,” Phillips said.

Her mother bought her a remote-control Jeep, and she was able to enjoy her social circles.

“It’s not, ‘Gimme, gimme.’ It’s, ‘How can I use a toy to be involved as part of the group?'” Phillips said.

She concluded that children’s requests for toys and products “are worth taking seriously. They use the process of consumption in very complex ways.” Children are astute at reading adults and their social situations, she said.

Phillips’ research was nominated for the award after it was published and spotted by a professor in the Netherlands. Phillips accepted the award in July when she attended the fifth World Congress of the International Toy Research Association in Nafplion, Greece. That event attracts scholars, students and representatives of museums and toy manufacturers, including Fisher-Price, from 20 countries.