First Year Toy Review, Part II

(This post was originally scheduled for April 7, 2010, but I've been having trouble getting my camera to upload photos and kept delaying it.  In the end, I've just decided that you'll have to use your own imagination for a couple of these.  Hope you can handle it!)

Last week, I profiled a few toys that I had acquired for my son when he was just learning to sit upright. While it may seem a little backwards, I'm going to cover some toys today that do not require the ability to sit unassisted. These are toys that a baby can play with during the first year of life at any point, so they are also all good toys for infants in general who are confined to a seat.

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Plastic juice bottle with jingle bells

Price: $2

Size: Small/Medium

Age: 4 months+

Durability: Variable

How it's made: This is a toy you make yourself. Ideally speaking, to create this you would buy (or reuse) some small jingle bells from your local craft store. Put 4 or so into a plastic bottle (preferably Simply Orange, as they use very durable plastic, and OJ is easy to rinse out) and recap. Be sure the cap is on very snugly or use a small amount of superglue to be extra sure the cap will not come off. If you use glue, use your common sense as well: don't overglue so that it drips below the cap; don't let the child come into contact with the glue.

Pros: It's cheap and easy and VERY entertaining. Also, if you lose it, it's easily replaced the next time you empty a bottle of orange juice.

Cons: Kids may fight over who gets to play with it. Guests may mistake it for trash. Can be fairly loud.

Educational Value: There's nothing really easily described about the educational value of a large rattle like this, but I still maintain that a baby learns from playing with it. A child's environment is his first teacher, so this is probably one of his first physics professors. Primarily, the value in this toy is that it allows kids an opportunity to experiment with physical consequences in a fairly safe environment. "When I turn it this way, these things in the middle move over here! And they make noise when they move! Whee!"

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Plastic water bottle, half-scrunched and recapped

Price: $0

Size: Small

Age: 4 months+

Durability: High

How it's made: When you finish a bottle of water, remove the label. Uncap, squeeze about half the air out, and recap tightly. (Be sure that the region near the cap isn't warped so that the cap does not fit properly!) Glue the cap shut as in the above toy, if desired. Some parents like to leave the bottle unscrunched or with some water in it or both. You can try out multiple variations to see which your child prefers.

Pros: This toy is easy to make instantaneously. You can create it anywhere you are, so long as you have a bottle of water with you. GREAT teething toy. When scrunched, the plastic makes fun noises that correspond to your baby's actions. The reflections and remaining water/water droplets inside capture an infant's eye. It's lightweight and fits well in a baby's hand. And of course, it's ridiculously cheap. If you suspect signs of wear or it gets too dirty, you can just toss it in the recycle bin and make a new one.

Cons: Guests may think it's trash.

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Links

Price: Varies, Under $10

Size: Very small

Age: Birth+

Durability: High

Pros: You can do soooo many things with links. You can use them to hold toys in cars (suspended from OSHs or infant carrier handles), strollers (hooked to frame), chairs in restaurants, etc. You can use them as pacifier clips. You can connect two toys together to make a new toy. The kid can chew on them as toys in their own right. Most links come in a variety of colors, textures, and even shapes. They can be used for parent toys, as well, for clipping cell phones, keys, or water bottles (w/carabiners) to diaper bags, purses, or belt loops.

Cons: Many brands of links lose their strength after a couple of years of hard use. They will not always stretch around what you hope they will.

Toy Review: Toys for the First Year

Many parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, older siblings, friends, and guilty-conscience acquaintances want to buy toys for children but have NO IDEA what to get them. At some point, we've all been that person shopping for the kid whom we rarely see and have little to no idea what she'd want for a toy. When the child is a baby, finding the "right toy" can seem even less clear-cut for some people. So, what I've decided the world (heh, I flatter myself) needs is some idea of what to get for children of different ages, based on my experience with my own son and other children in his general age group.

When you plan to purchase a toy for a child, the first consideration needs to be: is the parent going to be happy with this toy? Maybe the toy is a gigantic Tonka truck for your newborn (yes, my MOM did that to me); maybe it's a robotic dinosaur that roars (and terrifies your 2-year-old). In these situations, the toys are not unwanted in and of themselves, but they are really age-inappropriate.

Of course, the gift might be something that is categorized as being for a child's first year and have so many bells and whistles that it annoys the crud out of anyone who is sane enough to like a bit of quiet (including the child). Maybe it's visually overstimulating to the point where your child just avoids it (like this Discovery Elephant from Infantino).

Other considerations are the child's capability to play with the toy and what the child is likely to do with it. Most babies can't even hold things with their hands for about the first 3 months, so anything they use for entertainment before that has to be automatic or parent-controlled. Also, for the first year and often beyond, pretty much anything the child holds has the same destination: the mouth. If you suspect lead paint, barium paint, small parts, sharp edges, easily broken bits, or any other method by which a child could get hurt by breaking something or putting it in his mouth (such as choking!), then DO NOT give it to a child who hasn't reached the 12 month mark yet. Ideally speaking, a child under age 3 years should have NO ACCESS to anything that is dangerous, including pen caps, loose change, Legos, and Barbie shoes.

Also, believe it or not, expensive does not mean good. Yes, generally speaking, higher quality children's products do have a higher price. However, just because you spend $80 on a rocking giraffe, do not expect that the child will necessarily get $80 worth of enjoyment out of it.

When it comes to toys for the first year, simple is ideal. Most children under 12 months are happy most of the time with a half-crumpled water bottle to squeeze and chew. Aim for that mentality. In fact, for the first year there is very little need for toys at all except as a distraction technique. Babies will play with whatever surrounds them in their environment. Give a baby a solid wood drink coaster with concentric grooves in it, and she will chew on it, bang it on furniture, and touch its various textures. To give a child this age a toy that plays 50 digital songs and "teaches" a foreign language that the parents do not speak is overkill--and runs a serious risk of overstimulation.

Overstimulation is the technical term to describe a lot of seemingly different behaviors in young children. An overstimulated child will tend to be crankier and more withdrawn. If a child experiences too much overstimulation (such as excessive television and movies and video games), she will eventually come to expect the world to entertain her instead of finding her own entertainment. A baby is seldom troubled with the feeling of boredom. Everything in life is new and exciting (like that electrical outlet you forgot was under that table and that fork that went missing recently), and the most interesting things to a baby are those that help the child learn about the world she has joined.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has some great guidelines for parents on age-appropriate toys and activities:

One- to Three-Month-Old

• Images or books with high-contrast patterns
• Bright, varied mobile
• Unbreakable mirror attached to inside of crib
• Rattles
• Singing to your baby
• Playing varied music from music boxes, CDs, records, or tapes (and I'll add in mp3s here)

Four- to Seven-Month Old

• Unbreakable mirror attached to inside of crib or playpen
• Soft balls, including some that make soft, pleasant sounds
• Textured toys that make sounds
• Toys that have fingerholds
• Musical toys, such as bells, maracas, tambourines (Make sure none of the parts can become loose.)
• See-through rattles that show the pieces making the noise
• Old magazines with bright pictures for you to show her
• Baby books with board, cloth, or vinyl pages

Eight- To Twelve-Month-Old

• Stacking toys in different sizes, shapes, colors
• Cups, pails, and other unbreakable containers
• Unbreakable mirrors of various sizes
• Bath toys that float, squirt, or hold water
• Large building blocks
• "Busy boxes" that push, open, squeak, and move
• Squeeze toys
• Large dolls and puppets
• Cars, trucks, and other vehicle toys made of flexible plastic, with no sharp edges or removable parts
• Balls of all sizes (but not small enough to fit in the mouth)
• Cardboard books with large pictures
• CDs, tapes, music boxes, and musical toys
• Push-pull toys
• Toy telephones
• Paper tubes, empty boxes, old magazines, egg cartons, empty plastic soda/juice/milk bottles (well rinsed)

[All the above bulleted data was pulled directly from Caring for Your Baby and Young Child, Birth to Age 5, Revised Edition (link goes to 5th Edition, newer than my copy) which is a publication put out by the American Academy of Pediatrics. This book can be obtained free of its $20 price tag by joining the Publix Baby Club, which sends you a free copy just for joining.]

You'll notice that nowhere in all of that was a recommendation that you overload a child with glamorous, flashy toys. Many people have remarked that if you give a child a toy, he will spend a greater amount of time playing with the box it came in. Save yourself the money and just give the kid the box!

Over the next couple of weeks, I'll highlight some toys that have proven to be good all-around buys. I am not affiliated in any way with toy manufacturers or distributors, so I'm completely unbiased (and unfunded, heh). All toys that I will include for recommendations for the first year are durable and will easily tolerate a slobbery, strong, teething baby and "survive" with barely any signs of wear.