Tips For Toy Safety This Holiday Season
By TMC Health
·
12/01/2020
Tips for toy safety this holiday season
When gift shopping for your young children this season remember these guidelines to help keep your child stay safe:
General tips to consider when buying toys for a child of any age
- Pick age-appropriate toys. Most toys show a “recommended age” sticker, which can be used as a starting point in the selection process.
- Be realistic about your child’s abilities and maturity level when choosing an age-appropriate toy. This is especially important when considering hobby kits and chemistry kits, consider if what is contained may cause fire or explosions.
- Be cautious with toys that shoot objects into the air.
- Electric toys should be “UL approved” and labeled as such.
- Make sure stuffed toys are well made and are machine washable. Remove loose ribbons or strings in toys for young children to avoid strangulation.
- The label should say “nontoxic”.
- Plastic toys should be sturdy and not thin, which make break easily and injure your child.
Special tips for babies through preschoolers
• Don’t pick toys with a string or cord longer than 12 inches. A cord can easily wrap around a young child’s neck, causing strangulation. Once your child can climb up on his hands and knees, remove crib gyms and hanging mobiles from the crib.
• Think big. Until your child turns 3, toy parts should be bigger than his mouth to prevent the possibility of choking. To determine whether a toy poses a choking risk, try fitting it through a toilet paper roll. If a toy or part of a toy can fit inside the cylinder, it’s not safe.
• Skip the balloons. They may be cheerful party decorations and fun to bounce around, but latex balloons are the main cause of toy-related choking fatalities in children. When ingested, uninflated balloons (or pieces of burst balloons) can form a tight seal in a child’s airway and make it impossible to breathe.
• Avoid toys with small magnets. Magnets can be a hidden home hazard. Small, powerful magnets are often used in toys, and they may fall out of the toy and be swallowed by a child. Two or more swallowed magnets (or a magnet and a metal object) can be attracted to each other through intestinal walls, twisting and pinching the intestines and causing holes, blockages, infection, or worse if not discovered and treated promptly.
• Button Batteries: Keep coin lithium battery-controlled devices out of sight and reach of children. These include remote controls, singing greeting cards, digital scales, watches, hearing aids, thermometers, children’s toys, calculators, key fobs, tea light candles, flashing holiday jewelry or decorations all contain button batteries. Enter the National Battery Ingestion Hotline (202-625-3333) into your phone right now. Call anytime for additional treatment information.
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