Toys’ Description
As part of the child's early years of life, toys are essential. Further, in the child’s development, they serve multiple purposes. They provide entertainment as well as fulfilling education role to the growth of children. For instance, a toy may stimulate creativity and enhance observational capacity. More often, they play an essential role in physical and mental growth which are important in later life. In addition to consideration of the safety of the infant toys, they also need to match their development stages and emerging abilities. Some people argue that most of the appropriate and safe materials for playing are at home and they can be typically found at no cost. For instance, plastic bowls, cardboard boxes, collections of plastic bottle caps, lids, and other “treasures” can be used by children in more than one way of playing. However, this research attempts to analyze some of the modified toys which are specifically manufactured for the comfort of children play. Further, the research suggests that children of different ages require different toys as they develop at an individual pace.
Toy #1 Plastic Links (Good Toy)
These plastic links toys are made of trusty or gum hair tie While baby keeps busy twisting, squeezing, bending, smashing the BPA-free plastic links. They may also keep children busy while perfecting their ability to attach toys to play areas and gear items. The best feature of these plastic links is that they are not soft like teething toys. Thus, kids like putting them in their mouths, wavy textures, and explore the bumpy. The recommended age is between 0-12 months and beyond. The toy rating is 4 and the basic reason is that it is helpful to the young babies and not too extraordinary. In addition, it is simple and not heavy.
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Durability: It does not break easily and thus, very durable.
Safety: It is safe as the child cannot swallow and thus, no potential threat or harm to the baby.
Attractiveness: It is attractive to babies and thus, they would love touching and play with these plastic links.
Source of stimulation: Child development is stimulated with grasping, reaching, oral exploration, hand-eye coordination, and tactile exploration.
Toy #2 Doctor Play Set (Bad Toy)
The recommended age for this toy is between 2 and above years. The doctor play set toys to include some medical tools like a tongue depressor which is a thin plastic in length size of 4 and ¾ inches. The children are encouraged to put it in the mouth. Other characteristics include:
Take care of patients with 9 doctor tools that fit right inside carrying case.
Beeper with light and sound for busy little doctor’s stethoscope with a heartbeat sound.
Includes otoscope, blood pressure cuff, ouchless tweezers, say "ah!" mirror, safe syringe, just as safe scissors, and thermometer.
Self-packaged with gift tag 9 doctor tools fit right inside: Stethoscope with heartbeat sound, beeper with light and sound for busy little doctors.
Otoscope (or "ear checker"), blood pressure cuff, ouchless tweezers.
I would rate this toy 1 since at this age child is not aware of any medicinal purpose of the toy and resort by putting the device in their mouth.
Durability: Rated average
Safety: Potential threat for choking injuries and ingestion and thus, dangerous.
Attractiveness: Not very attractive
Stimulation source: The toy is supposed to help the kid to get and understand an early sense of medicinal components and what they do.
Toy #3 Educational (Average Toy-Not bad and not good)
Although the baby toys are meant for enjoyment, they should also be educational. Puzzles are commonly used as the ideal educational toys as they enhance and promote problem-solving skills and mental coordination of the baby. Also, it helps the baby to learn more about different images, like their shapes and colors. Puzzles may have different levels of difficulties and depending on the age. However, it is highly dependent on the baby’s own skills. This means that there are some babies who can solve puzzles with difficult levels than others. There are other types of educational toys introduce children to the concept of numbers and letters.
Recommended age: 6 and above
Toy rating: 3 = average
This is because the knowledge that kids gain from the puzzles or other educational tools is exactly what they may gain from their teachers. In other words, it is not as bad as a lack of using these toys and also it is not as good as being taught in school.
Durability: Durability is rated average.
Safety: Very Safe as it is designed in a manner that cannot pose any potential harm.
Attractiveness: Different colors making it very attractive.
Source of stimulation: Some of these educational toys also have some lighting and musical features which makes them interesting and more stimulating to the baby. In addition to piquing the baby's interest, the baby also gets familiarized with simple musical notes. The educational toy has been featured in this paper to demonstrate a toy that is average. That is, it can neither be described as “bad” nor “good.”
Discussion
When it comes to shopping of toys, of course, fun comes first and closely followed by safety. Some toys may be helpful to the developmental growth of kids and at the same time, they may be dangerous while playing with children. For this research paper, Plastic Links was focused on as a good toy. The first aspect that makes this toy to qualify as “good” is that it has safety standards. Its hard material makes it difficult for the children to squeeze it in their mouth or any other sensitive parts of the body. Further, it is just simple and more essential for child development. On the other hand, Doctor Play Set has been described in this research paper as a bad type of a toy. First, it fails to meet its purpose of stimulation which should be in a manner that can excite a child. Children must find something that can “catch” their attention to be fully stimulated. This means that the toy must be attractive. Most importantly, although it recommended by a doctor, it fails to meet the safety requirements and thus, becoming a potential danger for the children.
Conclusion
In conclusion, making a decision on which is a good or bad toy may not necessarily occur in the mind of a parent. Further, as the technology advances, toys are changing to more advanced ones. For instance, over the last decades, toys involved playing outside together physical activities which encouraged imaginative play. Currently, toys have gravitated to phones, electronic devices and other items that not movement based exercise. The safety standards and ability to enhance physical as well as mental growth of children is what is differentiating between “bad” and “good” toys. Many of these modern toys, although they are extremely entertaining and do offer some educational foundation, they are failing to provide necessary building blocks most children need to enhance their development and brain-building activity for higher learning. Therefore, it is upon the parent to take into consideration the type of the toys they are exposing to their children. Although most of the times some of these toys are the top gift givers lists that kids ask for, the decision to buy should be based on their benefits to the children.
References
Guha, M. S., & Murthy, M. K. (2018). UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF TOYS IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT: SPECIAL FOCUS ON TRADITIONAL CHANNAPATNA TOYS. INDIAN JOURNAL OF APPLIED RESEARCH , 7 (7).
Haut, M. L. (2018). U.S. Patent Application No. 29/581,780 .
Miller, J. L., Lossia, A., Suarez-Rivera, C., & Gros-Louis, J. (2017). Toys that squeak: Toy type impacts quality and quantity of parent-child interactions. First Language , 37 (6), 630-647.
