The Brockovich Report

My daughter used to bring home artwork made of little beads from school .

Such innocent little pellets.

Who knew that if ingested, they would degrade in the digestive system into gamma hydroxy butyrate, otherwise known as the date rape drug? Over the years, how many children have ingested those little tablets?

Not that it was ever marketed to young children--but there are an awful lot of households with older and younger children. And what younger sibling ever really kept his hands off of big brother's or big sister's toys?

This is the kind of recall that really makes you wonder how such inappropriate toys come to market to begin with. Aren't toys automatically supposed to be safe out of the box? But they are obviously not. With all the different types of benign medically safe plastics out there, how did it happen that some chemist or industrial "suit" chose to make a toy of the particular formation that would happen to degrade into gamma hydroxy butyrate when ingested?

It is a shame that we have to be so vigilant, hunting out unsafe toys thru strip malls, department stores and dollar stores the way our ancestors used to watch the forest for bears. How has it come to this, in this contemporary cornucopia of plenty that it is our very prosperity and ingenuity that holds one of the greatest threats to our children? Were Laura Ingalls Wilder's corn husk dolls this dangerous?

I wonder if the danger is a symptom of our high functioning society or if we're moving backwards.

Just look at the problem in the context of Maslow's hierarchy of need. Maslow analyzed society and need, and came up with a hierarchy of how people handle their most pressing issues in a certain order. First is food, shelter, all the physiological needs. That makes sense. First cavemen came in from the rain. After they had shelter, then they could worry about other stuff. Etc... Then comes safety, and after that is love and belonging, followed by esteem; and up at the very top, when all other needs are satisfied, is self-actualization. Most societies in centuries before this one were so busy surviving, they didn't worry about actualization, except for fifteen minutes or so, during the Renaissance.

But back to toys.

Back in day when we were cave dwellers, Wilma Flintstone didn't go to the department store. Maybe she handed little Bam Bam a rock, and just hoped he wouldn't brain his little brother. (Maybe he did, sometimes. Maybe that's why we now have the song "little bunny foo foo." But I digress.) Probably little Bam Bam and his little paleolithic brethren considered themselves lucky if they found anything to play with beyond the bones of yesterday's dinner. But as we developed society, the idea of toys for children developed. As society became more complex, toys themselves became more complicated, to help children learn to exist in their contemporary world.

So, in terms of watching the quality of toys, we've moved beyond the initial stages of basic "toyhood" and we're looking at toys closer, toward the top of the hierarchy, dissecting them under the sophisticated eye of "actualization." (Because, after all, each generation of children is the actualization of the last generation of adults--or at least that's what I'm theorizing. )

Now that as a society, we are looking at toys in terms of safety, it takes us back developmentally several steps, to safety. Ironically, the only reason that we can do this is because we've actually moved to the top of the ladder, to actualization. We have the time to analyze the quality of children's toys because we've got all of those other bases covered. In other words, Fred Flintstone was too worried keeping the saber-toothed whatsit from the door to worry whether or not Bam Bam's toy had lead paint on it.

But unlike hunting and gathering cultures, we contemporary people have tons of leisure time. We don't search for food from dawn to dusk; we come home from work and have long hours free. Free for self actualization. Free for entertainment. Free for nitpicking the quality of our children's toys.

Don't get me wrong. We SHOULD have high standards for the safety of children's toys. There's no excuse for marketing a toy that's dangerous to its target audience. It's really just that the miracle of our inventive genius--and the commercial market--that is so driven to keep producing ever newer, ever more wonderful gadgets...that keep finding new ways to be dangerous.

With the toy buying season upon us, we should be careful consumers. Specifically, careful toy consumers--for those of us who will be buying for children. Even with safe toys, there's no substitute for supervision or...wait, what is that thing called, I know I've heard of it. Oh yeah. Parenting. There's no substitute for parenting.

Take a look at the consumer group "WATCH."

World Against Toys Causing Harm (Watch) is a Massachusetts charitable non-profit corporation founded by Edward M. Swartz, a nationally known trial lawyer and child safety consumer advocate. I know how often lawyers form consumer groups like this just to be able to draw a pool of clients within an unofficial "area of expertise" but the concept behind this group is a pretty good one. Anyway, this group has compiled a list of toys. I can't say that I agree with all of these items on the list, because some problems, such as Jack Sparrow's Spinning Dagger have more to do with age appropriateness than intrinsic lack of safety. Look at the list. Then judge for yourself.

That said...don't tell my kids, but, when I was little, we rode bikes without bicycle helmets. We skated without padding. We got "Mattel" thingmakers where you'd pour weird colorful goop into metal molds and then put the molds into hot little ovens to make flowers or creepy crawlies; we'd play with clackers and accidentally hit ourselves on the head; paint model sets that came with Toluene paint thinner and throw lethal lawn darts. Neighborhood boys horrified girls by shooting at crows with their pump action air rifles; and the light bulbs in our easy bake ovens actually got hot enough to burn us.

Are parents of today too careful? I don't think so. Our world gets less dangerous and more dangerous every day, and as long as we parents have the free time, we should spend it making certain sure that our children have room to grow in an environment that is as safe as we can make it.