The Christmas Holidays and Children Toy Safety Advice

While we celebrate the Christmas Holidays by giving children various gifts, we must remember and be extremely careful not to buy gifts that will cause any harm and loss of life to kids. Toys are fun but can be dangerous too. Most toys in stores (or home made) are usually safe, but some still pose a variety of safety hazards to children. As such, we are being informed that recently the scope of unsafe toys were broadened to include those labeled as phthalate-free because some contained the dangerous chemical. See Toy Safety at https://wwwuspirg.org/issues/toy-safety. But there are a whole lot of characteristic parents and caregivers need to remember and look for when trying to protect children form harmful toys.

Make a check to ensure that toy makers follow guidelines established by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) for the age of the child. The toy should be labeled with the information and must specify what age child is unsuitable for the toy. Hence, features such as the physical ability of the child to play with the toy, the mental ability of the child to know how to use the toy, the play needs and interests present at various levels of a child development, the safety aspect of the specific toy are some of the age recommendations safety feature categories that needs to be taken into account. Toys for older kids can easily present some problems for younger ones.