Oh, I can just hear the squeals of delight on Christmas morning when they open their new, all natural, lead-paint-free toy from Santa. Merry Christmas, here's a stick! Hey, don't roll your eyes at me; it was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame this year. The stick is ‘celebrated for its versatility, affordability, and power to fuel a child's imagination', but cautioned by mothers for its eye-poking-out tendencies. The stick joins every teen's favorite 2005 inductee: a new car... dboard box.
In an article today regarding a slump in demand for Chinese goods, China's ruling Communist Party blamed the global economic slowdown. Huh? In this economy, they should be thriving... if they'd put out a non-poisonous product. We don't expect it to be a quality product, you get what you pay for, after all. But we do expect it to abide by importation rules currently in place, and not kill people. I stopped buying toys from China when the lead-paint recalls started coming in a year ago. Since they're still coming in, I'm still not buying painted toys. I stopped buying food from China when I learned of the tainted milk stories. So, China, when you stop trying to poison my child, I'll buy from you again. I love cheap stuff!
The first day of our Monday/Wednesday preschool was in an old building that wasn't kept up very well. Chipped paint on the window, old wimpy playground. The classroom was in the basement. Tiny window too high to reach and frosted to dim what little light it let in. The whole thing felt like a dingy, oppressive, lead-paint and asbestos pit. I stayed the whole first day -just to see if it got better. It didn't.
Salon takes a look at those noisy, supposedly educational Leapfrog toys to figure out if they're just a marketing scam or if they actually have a place in the home. I personally don't care for the sonic pollution of these things, but then again I have rigid home environmental policies that also prohibit LEGOs and blocks. (Nothing that will maim me when I step on it.) Do children's toys really need to teach them shapes? Are there a bunch of four year olds out there who are tragically far behind in their triangle recognition, oh, if only they had been playing with Leapfrogs instead of socks!
