hardofhearingchildren.com by PAM Candlish MLS
"What did you say?" "Eh?" "WHAT did you say?" "MM?" "WHAT DID YOU SAY?" oh "PARDON ME!"

Suggested Toys for Hard of Hearing Children.

About this time of year, all parents start looking at toys to please, or toys to educate. The children are seeing what they WANT by seeing items on TV or at the toy store or at a friend's house.

Toys are ugly, toy stores are accumulations of future Landfill

By and large, I find the toy industry to be making the world into a ugly place. TV characters are generated in a garret somewhere to be universally appealing without stepping over the line to really indicating racial origin, so they can sell more toys without market segmentation. The colours are ugly, the plastic lumps often resemble  poops lying around on the floor, although the children can tell you the names and stories because they have seen them on TV. And how many times have we parents said "Uhn-hun." when the child tells you about the toys, and we use the opportunity to review tonight's menu or to wonder if the dryer has finished. Some parents also look for commonalities and pretend to know about a character. Other parents go all the way and buy everything related, and develop a major collection for the child's benefit, and perhaps the parent's status... Harry Potter being the latest. You can get Harry Potter glasses, but not Harry Potter hearing aids.

Holidays and Gifts used to be Cheaper

Before Cabbage Patch dolls were marketed, it used to cost $30 to buy a child two presents, one from Santa and one from the parents, something nice and useable for Christmas and after. The family dogs always gave wonderful books, inscribed with paw prints and names. Looking back at the children's books in the house is a permanent list of the dogs who have chosen to live with us. We adopted a family tradition of one large present to the Christmas tree, which stayed under the tree until little Christmas, and was given from the tree to all the children equally. 

Cabbage Patch Broke the Patterns

 Cabbage Patch Dolls were launched at $35 each, and when you had spent all your money, you had one doll, so you still HAD to buy something else. My children were very lucky because a godmother made them each girl her own Cabbage Patch doll with matching hair, and eyes, and piles of little dresses. The children took the dolls to school and were laughed at for having homemade cabbage patch dolls. The peer groups lack of respect for homemade things ultimately led to me moving from a city to the country. So I have more respect for homemade presents, both from and to children.

 My favorite gift from a child is a personal book of tickets, decorated by the child and promising me a cup of coffee, a swept living room, a hug, a kiss. (I have them all)

Eschew Batteries (Aren't the hearing aid batteries enough for you?)

There are thousands of new toys on the market every year. Most of the toys today need batteries, and they can do many different things, as long as they have batteries. Children's expectations are very sophisticated, based on many factors from the peer group to the media. How often does a child think of the toy on the floor without batteries? Certainly my grandson's Sesame Street tape recorder is a great idea for working on his scant speech, the reality is a plastic box with a microphone, the tape deck fell out, and Jonathan establishes some curiosity as to what it should do but it is ready for the garbage, less than a year old.

Most Toys are Ephemeral

Many years ago we bought a racing set which was broken by Christmas afternoon, replaced it with another racing set which lasted one day, and finally bought a Wayne Gretsky table hockey game which lasted, but the hockey players disappeared. We gave the hockey game to our godson whose father went to many garage sales and found hockey players. My grandson's favorite toy at our home is our original Fisher-price castle which is 25 years old. His second favorite toy is spoons and a metal bowl, or an empty ice cream container, and me down on the floor playing noisily with him. And he likes anyone playing an alto recorder for him, and singing.

Best Quality sound, not too Quiet and not too Noisy 

When the child is hard of hearing, toys which have sound involved is a two fold consideration, the quality of the sound, and the loudness of the sound. Digital hearing aids make the hearing closer to normal, but the child needs a better sound to noise ratio, and clear sound which is often not the case with the children's toys. At the other end of the problem is toys which are too loud, and will cause hearing loss. If you are planning to buy something really expensive along these lines, give your audiologist a call, and see if the toy is appropriate.

Enjoy the Stages, Don't Push the Child

Another selling factor for toys today is the educational value built into the toys. Part of this appeal is to push little children ahead scholastically so they can be Einsteins when they grow up. Children have very definite flight plans to develop, and they must spend time on each level of development. If you by-pass crawling with a walker, you may have learning disabilities at the end. The child must crawl to learn about the world, and the child's relation to the world, and time. Saw a fascinating study on TV with crawling children and Dads, the child was allowed to crawl anywhere, and what they found was that the child crawled 50 feet in different directions, always keeping an eye on the parent and the distance, and immediately self-correcting when the crawling took the child too far. So be patient with your child, and let them play with age appropriate toys which are beautiful and fun.

The Best Teaching Program is You

If you are thinking about a great program to teach spelling or develop speech, remember the best speech development scenario is one-to-one between interested listeners and speakers.( and the next generation does not need to spell, they have spell-check) Do you want a pot for Christmas?

Working Parents Replace Themselves with More Expensive Presents 

Parents who work have much more money to spend on children's presents, and attempt to compensate for not being there due to work reasons with toys to please the child, and perhaps keep the parent in the active memory box. If you don't think this is a motivator, let me tell you that I clearly remember asking my mother what my father looked like when I was 5 in 1955, my father had been at the hospital for 6 weeks delivering babies and I had not seen him. I forgot who he was, and worried about it. Perhaps my mother remembered my sister running screaming from the house in 1944 when my dad returned after many years overseas, and was hugging my mother, to ask my grandmother, "Who is that man kissing Mummy?" I was taken to the hospital to see Dad, in between babies.

Absent Parents

Parents whose paths have separated from the child's daily life, often use the holidays as a chance to be expansive. Other parents do the opposite. No matter what a separated parent does, or does not do about the holidays, it will be noted.

Difficult Competition from Working Parents

Parents who don't go out to work for money have far less money to spend, and often feel quite frantic with all the push to buy more, expensive junk that is not really needed.

Simple Gifts

SO, in my opinion the best toys are the simple ones, crayons, paints, paper, building blocks, building toys, dolls, little cars for colour sets, stuffed animals and books, cameras, film..  Any toy I ever bought had to work with half it missing. 

For the hard of hearing child, you must assess each toy with the potential of self isolation which these kids do when tired, ie Nintendo, computer games. Pandering to self-isolation is bad in the long run, but saves your sanity in the short term...

And the very best present you can give your child is more of your time to do things together.

-PAM Candlish 3 November 2002

Colour Identification with Play-Dough and Toy Cars , Negotiation and Barter in the Family

The babies are sitting. My daughter invited me to eat delicious non-nutritious fatty food when her best friend from her childhood arrived in town with her new baby. Then they planned to go back to my daughter's apartment. I thought I would really appreciate  getting rid of the 3 year old while they fed the babies together. So I said "Drop me at the mall with Jonathan and we'll walk home." 

Buying Play-Dough

Jonathan and I went to the toy department to buy a can of Play-Dough. I modeled all the colours, Red Play-Dough, Yellow Play- Dough. Green Play-Dough. Purple-Play-Dough. Orange Play-Dough.  This is teaching the child that the set of Play-Dough is divided by colour.

A Social Family Game

Play-Dough is a marvelous substance. Each can is only limited by your own imagination. My children seldom had Play-Dough because I made cookie dough with colours and let them sculpt the cookies which were then baked and eaten, completely eliminating the post-Play-Dough mess. However the colours are so appealing, and every human has proficient Play-Dough skills that I often provide Play-Dough on the table as a post dinner activity with the whole family. It is important for there to be one can less of Play-Dough than the number of people, which adds a little spice. So I begin the game by taking some-one else's can, and he takes some-one else's can. Of course we are all doing this for the benefit of the child who will be amazed by the array of things inside a can of Play-Doiugh. I make geometric shapes well. Jonathan's dad is very good with Play-Dough and he usually makes an involved design of a car. There are many different animals in the cans too. The more fastidious artists need to have more than one colour, which involves negotiation and barter. The original ruling from me is to keep the colours separate so they don't disappear into that yucky all the colours mixed together. My rule needs to be approached verbally, but the majority usually agree that every one would benefit from a little of someone else's Play-Dough. Again forcing gentle negotiation and turn taking too.

Apparently Universally Therapeutic

One of my special ed friends in Florida says she finds that Play-Dough on the table during a conference about a student sooner or later   becomes a tension breaker, although she admits that it  can be hard to regain control of the meeting after the social Play-Doughing begins.

I did not buy the can of Play-Dough right away. We looked at many different toys. I needed a boat for the wading pool, but could not find one.  I promised a car if he behaved perfectly. Like all my children, he interpret the promise of a reward for  good behaviour as meaning the moon is the limit. My pre-selection is limited to Dinky cars which cost $1.

With Temper events, Reduce the Stims whenever possible

So we had the normal amount of difficulty on the issue of which car he would get. I pushed the cart out of the toy department so his angry, confused " I wants" were not being aggravated by the continued existence of a $100 car at his level in the store.

His running shoes were ripe and I decided he needed sandals which I hoped would be on sale. After trying three sandals on his foot, I found a pair which fit. He informed me that he did not like sandals, and did not wear them.  I pushed the cart over to the changing room where there is a nice hall of mirrors and lifted Jonathan out of the cart. He was fascinated with looking at himself, and spent a very long time running up and down. Then he turned to me and said "I like sandals. You have sandals and I have sandals."

Use the Location in the Store to Identify Groups

We went back to the toy department in search of the Play-Dough. This is teaching Jonathan that things in life are organized if he looks for the common factor...the toys are in the toy department. We found the Play-Dough again and I asked him which colour he wanted. He correctly identified the Orange can and choose it. I do not consent to buy the can until the colour identification is right. He is several years ahead of Reid in colours ( at the same age)

We also went through the same process at the Dinky car display and he choose a car by colour, meeting my price limitation. The same amount of modeling goes into the purchase of the car.

Then we stopped for cookies and coffee, read the comics, and then walked home to his apartment, a nice walk as it was downhill all the way.

PAM Candlish

15 July 2004