Save Your Child's Hearing -- Avoid Noisy Toys

I wanted to let you know what happened after my first post about noisy toys and finding out that they can be very dangerous for children’s hearing. I went through all of Landon’s noisy toys and listened to them. I have to tell you, I tossed out most of the ones that made so many sounds and had so many functions that they made me get ADD. It has been weeks since then, and Landon has not missed one of them. L has several large books that came with built-in sound functions, and I decided to keep a few of them but put stickers over the speakers. What a relief, the noise is now acceptable! I also did the same thing to the few noisy toys I kept. So it has been nice and quiet in the house!

Ironically, Don came home with a ”rumbling backhoe” for Landon that makes the most incredible “working” noise. It is deafening! I love it when he thinks of Landon and buys him something, but oh, my God, we could not hear each other talk when Landon was playing with that thing! I asked Don if he tried it out in the store, and he just mumbled something resembling a “yes.” I believe that means “no,” because if he had pushed the button on this thing in the store, he would have been mortified about causing that much noise and never bought it. I put tape over the “speaker” part of the backhoe, but it didn’t really muffle the sound much because of how it is built. It does have an off button, but Landon will just keep turning it on. So I guess I will find that battery compartment tomorrow and extract them! Sorry, Landon.

Save your children’s hearing and buy them a book instead!
(Another thing about this backhoe? It came with such ridiculous packaging — this one really took the price — and was tied down with tiny screws. It took us 10 minutes to open it! We were fuming and poor Landon had to be so patient. For that article and many pictures, read “Excessive Toy Packaging Unsafe and Wasteful”.