arms race

[metaphortunate]

US: Please don't give the kids battery operated toys that make a lot of noise

Comments

[metaphortunate]

Sometimes you have to! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[dr_memory]

I think my mom is still a bit steamed that I threw away the Hello Kitty doll with the little internal battery-powered music box that she got for Theda shortly after she was born, but the point is that she didn't do it again.

So, so, so with you on this.

[metaphortunate]

She quit after just one try? Man, these grandparents are made of sterner stuff. Mind you, my mom's been practicing by getting my brother's dogs loud toys for years.

[khedron]

*counting my blessings*

We've fought the "no noisy toys" fight, and I think we mostly won. Kids are older now, and we have toys that make noise, but it could be SO MUCH WORSE.

[metaphortunate]

It's not like we have no toys that make noise at all! We have a toy drum, even. And a whistle. But battery-powered toys are worse, somehow.

[metaphortunate]

Oh dear. Do they yell HULK SMASH or something?

[mamagotcha]

Oooh wow, such memories. My mother INSISTED on purchasing those gawd-awful books, with buttons along the side that you press to make noise. I immediately said that if she gave them a noise-making toy, it would live at HER house. Everything she gave the kids that made noise became "Grandma's House Toys." It worked.

If you never go to their house, then I would make it a Special Grandma Toy (that only comes out when Grandma is visiting). And be sure to tell her ahead of time that this is going to be the fate of such a toy. When Grandma leaves, up it goes into the Special Grandma Toy Box.

Good luck. You MUST win this one, for your own sanity.

[metaphortunate]

Oh god, we have one of those fucking books. From my mother! And it is a truly god-awful Peanuts book written by someone else, because Schulz never met a licensing opportunity he didn't love. It is saccharine and nasty at the same time. The kids, of course, love it to pieces, why god why.