Holiday and birthday season fanfare has already begun, and I am thinking of a new holiday motto: No more junk toys!
Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and/or the Winter Solstice, if you have children, you know what junk toys are. Junk toys are toys that have little educational value, are usually made of plastic, are overly commercial, and end up in our landfills. Further, kids will play with them for 5 minutes... and then they just sit in a bin waiting to be played with. They are often in the price range of 1 cent up to 1 dollar... maybe 2, 3, 4, or even 5 dollars if you're lucky!
Mothering Magazine featured a great article four years ago titled "No More Junk Toys: Rethinking Children’s Gifts" by Judith Rubin. Rubin writes,
"Like junk food, junk toys can be fun but are devoid of nutrition. Buying them requires little forethought. They are excessively commercial, and are often linked to cross-marketing schemes. They excite children at first, but that initial flicker doesn’t endure. Also like junk food, junk toys have hidden environmental and social costs for which the consumers pay."
The safety of toys made in China has been in question lately with the recent rave of recalls- toys poisoned with lead, toys containing phthalates and other "drugs", and toys that are just unsafe for our kids- for whatever reason!
Yes, my kids LOVE these little, non-purposeful toys- for about a day.. and then these junk toys are stuffed into a closet, toy bin, in my purse (?) or on the floor of my car. I keep saying that I am going to do a "big toy clean out" before all of our upcoming birthdays and toy-giving holidays... I just keep procrastination... kinda like that baby book I need to finish once and for all!!!!
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3 comments:
I am thinking the same thing - i really want to give my kids things that they will actually USE and play with for a long time. Right now for Liam that is building toys. I don't know what it is for Riley exactly... sometimes the "stocking stuffers" trip me up - what is small enough to fit in a stocking that isn't a piece of junk? How do you guys manage that?
For stocking stuffers, I am thinking of matchbox cars, little Lego sets, crayon packs, stickers, little jewelry/hair clips and "lip gloss" for Leah...
We'll see what else I can come up with. Let me know if you have any good ideas.
How are you feeling????
Stompers!
Oh how I miss them!
http://stomper4x4.com/onemoc.htm
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