Toy Recalls - The Bright Side

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I must give the credit for my inspiration for this discussion to my friend Cyntrow who told of her own optimism in one of her discussions. This is one we can easily tie to the "If life hands you lemons make lemonade" or however it goes exactly...lol There have been several different toy recalls in recent weeks, I'm not even sure how many now but it involves millions of toys. This couldn't come at a worse time for many parents with the holidays right around the corner and some people probably already well into their shopping. Added to that is the problem parents have if they discover their child already has one or more toys that have been recalled...scary indeed and not an easy task to "sneak" a favorite toy away from a toddler. It all got me to thinking about how times have changed since I was a child. I wsn't a deprived kid by any means but I sure didn't have one percent of the toys kids today have and I think I had a great childhood! I was able to amuse myself with very little to "play with". My brother, who is 14 years older than me had even fewer toys than I did and I'm sure my parents had practically none! The point is every generation has brought more and more gadgets that every child HAS to have and the marketing to children gets more agressive all the time. Now, with the knowledge some of these toys are not only over-priced and take up space you don't have to spare in your home, they're actually quite dangerous to you child's safety and health, maybe it would be a good time for us to take a step back and see if we can't return a little bit to the good old days when kids could find something to do without a warehouse full of toys. Let them use their creativity - you'd be surprised what kids can come up with to pass the time if they're left to their own resources. I used to spend hours cutting pictures out of old magazines and pasting them on construction paper to make scrapbooks. I also started writing short stories when I was very young and my love of writing remains to this day. We used to play "school" and we didn't need any toys for that except may be chalkboard. Then there's that old standby for the young future entrepreneur...have a lemonade stand! The toys from China are all "lemons" but the kids can still make - and sell - lemonade! Annie