When choosing a toy for your child, you naturally want to consider the toy’s staying power, quality, versatility, and educational value. But here are some other questions you might want to ask yourself before bringing home a new toy for your offspring:
- Exactly how many losable parts does the toy have? Will they fit in the vacuum cleaner?
- How many pain-induced profanities do you predict you’ll utter when you step on the toy (or its pieces) when your child abandons it in the middle of the floor?
- How quickly will the sounds the toy makes drive you to poke out your own eardrums?
- Does it sing a song? Are you okay with that song running through your head as you take a shower, eat your breakfast, do your work, make dinner, read a book, and drift off to sleep?
- How annoyed will you be when your child takes the toy apart, either to see what’s inside, or to part it out for other use?
- How disappointed will you be when your child chooses an empty box, a pillowcase, or a pile of dirt to play with instead of the toy?
- How much physical or emotional damage can your child do to another child with the toy?
- Is the toy so popular that you run the risk of having to physically harm another parent in order to get one?
- Can you picture the toy with stick people and one of your children’s names (with half the letters backwards, and not necessarily the owner’s) scrawled on it in permanent marker?
- Are you prepared to have your child completely ignore the toy until one unpredictable moment when they can’t find it—the moment in which the world will come to a bloodcurdling end because it suddenly became their “favorite toy”?
 |
| Photo credit: MeddyGarnet |
Happy shopping, everyone. 🙂
If you enjoyed this post, please pass it along. You can follow Motherhood and More on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.