I belong to a group for parents of preemies and a group for parents of kids with cerebral palsy. Today, people posted in both a link to a Toys R Us catalog for differently abled children. Sounds great, right? A catalog full of toys made especially for kids like Ace and others?
Wrong. I looked through the whole catalog and found nothing other than the same doggone toys they sell in all of their stores. They wanna categorize all of the toys under things like social skills, fine motor skills, gross motor skills, whatever... but it's the same toys you would use for any kid. All kids need help in developing those skills... why would they use our children like this?
I call major shenanigans and exploitation. Look at us, we're so great, we have a catalog full of toys for these children, with pictures of them showing their various levels of ability and happy quotes from the kids' parents... buy from us, we're so enlightened. Shut up. Put the disabled kids in ALL of your catalogs (which, to be fair, they usually do) and quit using our children and their disabilities to sell your doggone toys.
For shame, Maria Shriver, for shame.
3 months ago
1 comment:
Hey Stacey.... I have known about this catalog for quite some time and the way it was explained to me (by a manager at Toys R Us) was that the toys are categorized not as "different" toys for children with disabilities... but more to make it easier for folks to buy the toys based on the NEEDS of the kids.
For example, if Gramma knows that Ace needs to work on fine motor and has *no clue* what that means.. she can grab the catalog and see what types of toys are good for fine motor growth :)
I thought it was a great tool for people who may not know what will help promote certain skills :)
Jo
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