I have been fretting on whether or not to write this post since Christmas. Bear with me, folks. I hate walking the fine line between opinions and manners, and I feel like I there’s no way I can say this without pissing someone off. But since it’s a matter of physical harm, the right choice is to speak up.
Parents are often, but not always, aware of issues that non-child-having people aren’t, because they’re simply not on their radar. This is fair; there are many, many issues in this world that I’m oblivious to. I like to think I surround myself with people who can illuminate me. So please, if you’re “The Person” and you’re reading this, please don’t be hurt, please don’t be upset. Whoever you are, I hold you in high esteem for what you did, and I’m trying to help you out with what you don’t know.
Everyone confused yet?
Here’s what happened. On Christmas, some gorgeous, generous, fabulous person dropped two full garbage bags of carefully-wrapped, individually tagged gifts for my children, on our boat. This is real salt-of-the-earth stuff. They also left not a single identifying marker. I can’t place the handwriting, and I can’t figure out who the heck it was. Total Santa Moment, and I have teared up a few times over it.
Jason brought the bags to Nevada with him, and we opened them there. And then I figured out that our anonymous benefactor was not aware of what’s going on with toys.
There were approximately four gifts, in the entire two bags full, that I could allow my children to keep. You see… they were all made in China. They were painted with lead. They were contaminated with cadmium. They were plastics that would leach Bisphenol A into my children’s bodies. I spent the morning not playing joyfully with my kids, but explaining to them what kind of poison was involved with each toy that I (once Mommy, now Grinch) was not going to be allowing them to keep.
Thank God I am blessed with wise children, who get it, and there was minimal trauma involved.
As I cringed from the rotten position I’d been put in, I found myself raging, yet again, at a system that makes it a good idea for someone, somewhere, to make their money by poisoning kids, and that also keeps the public mostly unaware of this.
So what to do? If you’re going to give kids toys, the best guideline is to ask their parents first, and to stick with fewer, higher-quality, organic toys. I know this is the massive buzz-kill, but believe me, it’s better than forcing that kid’s parents into a position of literally taking the new toy out of their hands and pitching it into hazardous waste disposal, so that it can’t go on to hurt any other kids. Generally, things that your great-grandparents would recognize as toys are good bets: Blocks, play silks, carved wooden animals, handmade dolls. Something made, rather than something bought.
I haven’t even touched on issues of child labor, sweatshops, fair wages, or any of the other ethical issues in toymaking. I am only focusing on pure physical harm and poison. And I am frankly horrified at the idea that someone who didn’t know any better could have picked a totally beautiful and random set of toys and ended up with so very many things that would permanently damage kids. I am completely flipped out by the thought that there are a gazillion other American kids out there whose parents didn’t know, who got to play with that stuff, and whose brains and bodies are shriveling under the onslaught right now.
Heaven knows I’m not a luddite by any stretch, but since I had to go through my kids’ toys and purge for lead once already, I’m a little sensitive. And apparently not without good reason. It’s gotten really dangerous out there, and we live in a world where profit is more important than children’s health.
