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Toy
Safety Article: The information you need to make safe toy choices and
valuable tips on what you as parents and caregivers
can do to protect
your children from unsafe toys!
Who is Responsible for Protecting Kids From Unsafe Toys?
By Lill Hawkins
Many parents are up in arms about the recent spate of toy recalls.
Dolls, action figures, ride-on toys, even teethers have been recalled.
Lead paint, magnets that can detach, chemicals in plastic that are
unsafe... It seems like everyday there's a new recall.
Outside of returning the toys and getting a refund, what can a
parent do? Who is responsible for toy safety? Is it enough to buy toys
from reputable merchants? Or is there more that parents can do to be
sure that their kids aren't victims of unsafe toys?
Ultimately, of course, we as parents are responsible for keeping our
kids safe. It's not realistic to think that every toy can be tested for
safety, or that every so-called safe toy is safe for every child.
It's so important to make sure that toys are age-appropriate and
right for the developmental level of our children. It's our duty as
parents to make our decisions about toy buying based on what we feel is
right for our child, not what it says on the box or what someone else
thinks is appropriate.
So it would seem that keeping kids safe is a shared responsibility
between manufacturers, parents and government agencies designed to
protect consumers. Manufacturers need to produce safe toys so that they
will retain the trust of parents, who are the biggest buyers of toys.
At the same time, parents need to police their children's toys, stay
current on the latest safe toy info and check the recalls frequently.
When there is a recall, it's important that parents don't leave it
up to their kids to find and dispose of the recalled toy. For one
thing, children might not understand the seriousness of lead paint of
magnets that can be swallowed by a younger sibling. They might be very
attached to the recalled toy and be unwilling to discard it or give it
to their parent.
Parents should go through all of the toys in the house every once in
awhile, just to make sure that toys haven't broken or developed sharp
surfaces or chipped paint. It's easier to keep track of toys if
children are encouraged to have a "place for everything" rather than
just throwing all their toys into one large bin. Individual baskets for
each type of toy make it easy to go through them quickly.
The bottom line is that we're all responsible for toy safety, but
the manufacturers bear the biggest burden, because they profit from the
toys. They control the factories and the workers and that means that
they are the first line of defense against unsafe toys. When there's a
recall, parents will blame them, even if they've outsourced the
manufacture of the toy. It behooves them to do a better job of
protecting children.
Lill Hawkins blogs about resources for finding safe toys for Toddlers to Teens and maintains a recall list at How to Find Safe Toys
Check in daily for the latest toy recalls and a long list of alternatives to blah big-box gifts.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lill_Hawkins
http://EzineArticles.com/?Who-is-Responsible-for-Protecting-Kids-From-Unsafe-Toys?&id=790036
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