The Stay at Home Mother

I recently wrote an article on the quality of toys that are out there right now in the market place. To be honest, with all the recalls that are going on, it makes you wonder how safe you children really are.

The Thomas the Train recall was the most significant in our household, as we owned five of the recalled items. All contained lead paint, which is considered to be highly toxic if ingested by a child. And guess what? When I mailed it back to them - I noticed a lot of the paint had already worn off...unbelievable.

And then there are the Easy Bake ovens that were just recalled last week. Apparently there were HUNDREDS of children getting their hands stuck in it and were receiving second and third degree burns from it. One five year old girl had to have her some of her fingers amputated because of the severity of her burns.

Ok - am I the only one that thinks giving a child a toy that is hot enough to burn them is a really, really bad idea. What happened to using their imagination? Why do they ACTUALLY need to have a working oven?

I went to the recall website to see other things that had been recalled, and scared myself silly. Why? Because over the years, we have owned some of them (no longer - but still - we did have some of them...) Things like teether rings, jingle keys.....

I tell you another scary thing - what about the toys that don't get recalled by smaller companies who can't afford to do it - or simply don't care?

I guess it comes down to us as parents to really examine each toy we give our children. Read the back, see where its made (If its cheap and made in China....you are taking a gamble) ie. parts could come off, and lead may be in the paint...etc. If they are cheap and seem too good to be true - most likely they are.

But the name things like Thomas the Train is really bad. Because its a brand name and we pay more for that security....so I don't really know what the answer is - other than taking a stand as a consumer and a parent and letting big companies like this know that this cannnot be tolerated - because in the end, its our children who will truly pay the price.

Here are two links to check out for recalls if you really want to know if you have a product (or products) that may be dangerous to your family.

http://recalls.rc2.com/

http://www.cpsc.gov/