As a parent, you often have a great responsibility toward your children. Choosing the right toy is certainly one of the difficult decisions you often have to make. When you stand in the toy store in front of the shelves, you once again become aware of being spoiled for choice: wooden toys or children's toys made of plastic?
Toys made of plastic
One thing is clear: plasticizers—so-called phthalates—are not permitted in baby and children's toys in the EU. Nevertheless, it is a fact that they keep turning up in toys—a fact that we parents are aware of, yet we cannot tell by looking at the toy. Since especially small children very much like to put toys in their mouths, these harmful substances quickly enter the body. Now one might think that wooden toys would be the better solution in this dilemma. But even here you cannot always be sure.
Choose wooden toys carefully too
Not all wooden toys are the same: in particular, items from China and Japan usually contain toxic wood preservatives, so it is advisable not necessarily to save money when buying wooden children's toys. Ecological toys are harmless, saliva-resistant and water-soluble, which promises carefree playtime fun for parents and children. When buying children's toys, be sure to look for the CE mark and the GS mark.
And other advantages also pay off in the longer term: although you will incur higher costs when purchasing them, in the long run your child will get more out of wooden toys than plastic goods, because on the one hand they are much more robust and on the other hand they are hard to break.
Now, opinions are spreading everywhere that plastic is more hygienic than wood, but here too the devil is in the details. An experiment in which a wooden kitchen board and a plastic kitchen board were contaminated with bacteria showed that after three minutes, without any additional treatment, the wooden boards were 99% free of pathogens. The plastic boards were different, still harboring a large proportion of the bacteria.
Also bear in mind that with wooden toys, your child is holding a piece of nature in their small hands. This helps children recognize early on what living materials are, and the uneven surfaces also promote the child's sense of touch. Furthermore, wooden toys are generally much quieter and kept in more subtle colors than plastic toys, whose sensory overload is likely to overwhelm any child in the long term.
My conclusion
Personally, I chose the golden mean. Our children had both wooden toys and things made of plastic. Building blocks were of course made of wood, as was the classic Brio railway. Only when my son got older did he naturally want the modern trains, like Thomas, which in turn were made of plastic.
Now that the children have not played with baby toys for a long time, it also has to be said: I have kept all the wooden toys. I have largely disposed of or passed on the plastic stuff, because I think it will not keep as well in the basement as the things made of wood.
Photo by Sabine, meinhaushalt.at
Also read: This is what you should keep in mind when buying children's toys
