Written by Donna Davies, Speech Language Pathologist
Donna Davies is a Pediatric Speech-Language Pathologist with over 30 years of experience. She owns Dragonfly Therapy Services, a private S-LP clinic specializing in early language delays, speech sound disorders and persistent sound errors in older children. Recently, she has added Orofacial Myology to her skill set.
Are you tired of all the battery-operated toys in your home that only seem to capture your child’s interest for a short time? Does your child prefer to play endlessly on a digital device? Are you concerned that your child is behind in their development due to playing with toys and devices that do not provide optimal learning opportunities? Look no further! In this article, a Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) with over 30 years of experience shares seven compelling reasons why battery-operated toys and digital devices should not be the toys of choice. From research that supports why these toy choices do more harm than good to tips on reclaiming true play for your child, get ready to discover why technology cannot replace a parent’s role in their child’s development. This article has all you need to replace tech toys with toys and activities better designed to promote speech and language and foster healthy parent-child interactions.
Powerful play doesn’t need batteries
Play is the game of childhood. It looks deceptively simple, but housed within its silly games of make believe, rough and tumble movements, solitary block building, and puzzle making is a powerhouse of learning and development. Through the games of childhood, a child develops motor skills, balance, and coordination; skills they use to perfect walking, running, sitting, holding a spoon, and cutting with scissors. They learn about the meaning of words, make connections to things in the real world, and give names to what they see, touch, feel, and smell. They also develop critical thinking, imagination, and creativity, while practicing the art of using words to express feelings, negotiate, problem solve, direct, and explain.
Play is complex, but the wonderful thing for parents is that they don’t need to know anything about play’s complicated nature because humans are designed to play; no batteries needed, no manual required. It’s that silly hand clapping game you do with your child; the monster chase game you play; the magic trick of “pulling your nose off your face.” It’s your child playing with stacking cups, Play-Doh, crayons, paints, and books; building forts with pillows; constructing castles from blocks; dressing like a king and slaying an imaginary dragon. This is true play; this is the play of childhood.
As society has increased its reliance on technology, believing smartphones, apps, and educational toys are essential to children’s development, it is not surprising that more and more toys are battery operated or digitally designed. With the shift to technology, the fundamental needs of what our children require to thrive have been overlooked. Our children need experiences rooted in true play. True play is an activity that a child chooses to immerse themselves in (Nell & Drew, n.d.). It is an activity in which they are free to take risks, experiment, and be a discoverer. True play brings joy, self determination, and freedom to those engaged in it. Sadly, children now rely on technology for the majority of their play and spend more time interacting with devices than engaging in any other single waking activity (Boylan, 2008).
Almost any toy you can think of, even those you had as a child now come with batteries. Classics like the Fisher Price barn, airplane and bus; bouncy chairs, play mats and Exersaucers; shape sorters, puzzles, play kitchens, ride-on-toys, baby dolls, rattles, tool benches and discovery tables all come with batteries. Not convinced? Check out the Fisher-Price website for Baby Toys and scan the page. Of the 99 toys on page one, more than 50% require batteries. Many advertise multiple play levels while others boast 100+ songs and words.
These are not the toys that should fill toy boxes or playrooms. Instead, our children should play with simple, back-to-basic toys that promote physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development, while fostering speech and language skills in the real world. Toys that children choose because they spark creativity, imagination, and curiosity. Toys that encourage positive and responsive interactions with parents who engage with their child instead of watching from afar while a toy does the teaching.
No child should be plugged into battery operated toys or devices for learning. Children should be plugged into the world around them, allowing opportunities to interact, explore, and discover as they develop their most complex sensory system, the brain. With 0 to 3 years of age being the most critical time for brain growth, our children must be given play opportunities that promote this growth, not impede it. It is time to throw away battery operated toys, turn the screens off, and start playing.
Why ban battery operated toys?
1. False learning claims
When parents head out to buy a new toy for their child, they are met with a dizzying display of toys on the shelves, all shouting: “Buy me. I will teach your child manners, greetings, body parts, feelings, numbers, colors, sizes, and opposites. I will engage your child in musical fun with sing along songs. My realistic sounds will encourage imaginative play.”
There are hundreds of these toys, all claiming to teach our babies and our 9, 12, and 18 month olds skills they are developmentally not ready for. One only has to look at a typical developmental char to see that a toy claiming to teach a 6 month, 12 month, or even an 18 month old the alphabet, counting, feelings, colors, or shapes is blatantly false. These little humans are barely talking, using only a handful of words their parents understand. Their first words are typically “mama,” “dada,” and “up,” not letters, colors, or feeling words.
Big tech companies have done a masterful job convincing parents that learning toys, apps, and screens are invaluable to the growth and development of their children. Parents routinely give these toys and devices to young babies and toddlers. However, to give their child a learning advantage, parents must steer clear of toys with promises of educational learning (Moretz, 2022). These promises are false and are not backed up by research or scientific data (Hall et al., 2022).
2. Controls the play
Almost all interactive, battery operated educational toys direct the child’s play by talking, singing, or instructing the child to do something (Moretz, 2022). Children are naturally drawn to exploration and discovery and prefer to engage in activities such as these on their own, in their own way. Battery operated toys do not foster much exploration or discovery. Children quickly figure these toys out. In no time, they have pushed all the buttons, listened to all the songs, and played all the levels. With nothing more to do, the toy is tossed aside for the next one.
With children spending an alarming number of hours with battery operated toys and screens, it is no surprise that toys and activities that meet the definition of true play are becoming things of the past. Yes, kids still play with dolls, have tea parties, and play house. They still play with action figures, race cars, and construction trucks, but the difference is that the baby dolls cry, laugh, and talk. The teapot whistles, asks to be poured, and sings a chorus from Beauty and the Beast. House is no longer blankets thrown over couches and chairs but a kitchen center with running water sounds, sizzling bacon sounds, and a beeping microwave. Buzz Lightyear shouts, “To Infinity and Beyond,” while Marshall from Paw Patrol says, “I’m all fired up” repeatedly. Race cars roar, and construction trucks rumble. These toys control the game of play and silence the child’s voice. They do not even get the chance to be creative and make their own sounds and scripts for their play.
3. Limited use
Interactive, battery operated educational toys limit how a child can play with them. These toys engineer and direct a child’s play (Moretz, 2022). They come with programmed play modes and levels and offer only the songs and words they have been programmed with. If these toys have no batteries, there is not much a child can do with them.
By nature, kids are creative and imaginative. They need toys and activities they can get lost in as they play—ones that foster manipulation and exploration and fire up the imagination, leading to endless playtime. They do not need toys that do the same thing every time a button is pushed (Moretz, 2022). Toys a child can endlessly manipulate can be transformed into something that expands or enhances play. For example, a Hot Wheel track can become a sword, pots can become helmets, and a ride on toy can become a taxi. Blocks are an example of a timeless classic that can be endlessly manipulated and transformed into almost anything a child can imagine. This type of play encourages immersion in true play and can lead to improved speech and language outcomes (JAMA and Archives Journals, 2007). This type of play replaces time spent on activities that do not encourage speech and language development, like battery operated toys or digital devices.
4. Does not promote speech and language
Despite all the educational claims, battery operated toys and digital devices do not promote speech and language in children. In fact, these toys and devices hinder the very development parents buy them for.
It is well known that children learn speech and language from having positive interactions with caring and responsive parents who talk to them. Parents are innately wired to respond to their child’s verbal attempts. When babies coo, parents use “motherese” to keep the conversation going. When toddlers start making sounds and sound combinations, parents respond and interpret these words by repeating what they think their child said, responding with “tell me more,” or doing for the child what they believe was requested. These favorable responses encourage the child to try that sound or sound combination again. The more the child makes sounds and combinations, the more those attempts refine themselves into real words. It is very powerful for a child to make the connection that the sounds they make can influence their parent. This is the motivator to keep talking.
No battery operated toy or digital device can provide speech and language learning like a human can. These toys do not interpret gestures or facial expressions, nor do they respond to a child’s vocalizations. They simply talk at the child with artificial voices and words spoken so quickly and without context that the child cannot easily comprehend or respond. The sing along songs of battery operated toys and digital devices are also fast, so fast that a young child learning to talk cannot keep up. With no way to slow the music down to give the child an opportunity to join in, they are left out. Furthermore, most young children learning to talk first join in with music using gestures rather than words, but these toys cannot teach the gestures for “Wheels on the Bus” or “Five Little Monkeys.”
For a child to learn speech and language, they must be spoken to. However, with the ever increasing number of battery operated toys and digital devices in homes, the act of caregivers talking to their children is becoming endangered. Shockingly, 90 percent of parents report their children under the age of two watch some form of electronic media (Council on Communications and Media & Brown, A., 2011). On average, children under two watch one to two hours of TV, and 14 percent of children aged six to 23 months watch some form of media for two or more hours a day. For many families, it is commonplace to simply have the TV on all day.
The seemingly harmless act of having the TV on all day, regardless of whether anyone is watching or not, negatively impacts a child’s speech and language development. This is because both the child’s verbal attempts and the words spoken by their parents are reduced in number (Christakis et al., 2009). When the TV is on, even as background noise, researchers found a significant reduction in the child’s vocalizations, the length of vocalizations, and conversational turns. More alarmingly, for every additional hour the TV was on, the number of words a child heard from an adult decreased from the typical 941 per hour to about 171 words. Researchers concluded that when the TV is on, adult words are almost completely eliminated. How is a child to learn speech and language when no one is talking to them?
The lack of conversation and words spoken by adults is not a phenomenon unique to background TV. It has become much worse as screens have taken over everyday life, with adults finding it difficult to separate themselves from their devices and engage with their children. Remember, children learn language by having responsive, communicative partners who label things in their environment, respond to their attempts to communicate, and create opportunities to talk. Learning to talk is not a solo activity. It truly does take a child and a parent.
5. Negatively alters the parent-child interaction
Not only are children engaging with devices instead of doing the play of childhood, but these toys and devices also interfere with positive and responsive interactions with their parents. With battery-operated toys and digital devices seen as valuable teaching tools, research shows that more and more parents are leaving their children in the care of the toy, resulting in fewer parent-child interactions (Wooldridge, M. B., 1981).
Big tech companies have marketed their toys, games, apps, and videos so effectively that parents unwittingly hand them over, believing these products are educational and will provide valuable learning experiences. The unsubstantiated educational value parents place on these toys often serves as the reason they distance themselves from the responsibility of being the essential communicative partner their child needs. Although parents hand these toys and devices over in good faith, many are unaware that not playing, engaging, or sharing the moment with their children can negatively impact their development. Active parental involvement is crucial for a child’s growth and development (Wooldridge, M. B., 1981). TV, apps, educational videos, and battery-operated toys are inadequate substitutes for genuine interaction.
6. Trains the child to need higher levels of stimulation to stay entertained
As long as parents continue to view battery-powered toys and digital devices as valuable learning tools, and big tech companies continue to “battery-ize” infant and toddler toys, the younger our children will be when first introduced to digital devices.
The introduction of battery-operated toys in infancy and toddlerhood marks the beginning of children’s conditioning to need higher and higher levels of stimulation to be entertained. This growing need for stimulation often goes unnoticed by parents as the reason these toys gradually become replaced with phones and tablets. This shift leaves parents wondering why their child finds activities such as storytime, painting, and coloring boring. Children are bored with these activities because they lack the exciting visual and auditory stimulation of the lights, sounds, images, and music they are accustomed to receiving with every push of a button.
As you have learned, playing with a battery-operated toy or device does not develop the skills needed for everyday real-life tasks. The hard work kids do while engaged in true play develops skills required for things like eating with utensils, dressing, cutting, and writing. Persistent and consistent effort is required by the child for these skills to be mastered. Sadly, most children no longer want to do hard work without the immediate reward of lights or sounds, as they have come to rely on the toy or digital device to reward them instead of their own intrinsic motivators—the feeling of accomplishment, satisfaction, and pride that comes with learning to do something that was once hard.
Parents further condition their children to need devices to be entertained by routinely handing them over whenever they are concerned their child might be too noisy, disruptive, or ill-behaved. To avoid any possible issues or outbursts, the child is preemptively given a device, regardless of whether they have asked for one. This seemingly harmless action reinforces a child’s reliance on digital devices in many social situations, isolating them from valuable real-life learning experiences. These experiences include learning to delay gratification, practicing patience, understanding social rules, and finding joy in simple but entertaining activities such as stacking creamers into towers at a restaurant, organizing groceries in the cart while being pushed around the store, or coloring or looking at a book while waiting.
With parents handing over digital devices to keep their children occupied and well-behaved in all the places families go, it is alarming to realize that the sounds of children are rarely heard anymore. If you look, you will notice it is not just the child on a device but the parent as well. Though it doesn’t happen often, it is a joy to hear a small child’s voice in the grocery store or at a restaurant as the parent and child take advantage of this time together—laughing, talking, and connecting.
7. Is a source of noise-induced hearing loss
You have learned that battery-operated toys limit true play experiences, but they also pose a significant risk to a young child's hearing. In Canada, electronic toys with a decibel rating of more than 100 dBA are banned by Health Canada, while The Sight and Hearing Association in the United States uses 85 dBA as the upper limit. Regardless of the dBA rating at which a toy is banned, parents need to know that 100 dBA is equivalent to the noise of a snowmobile or motorcycle, and 85 dBA is as loud as a lawnmower. Even with these bans, many battery-operated toys our children play with exceed these limits. Hearing experts are unanimous that sounds at these levels can begin to cause damage to the ears within 15 minutes of use (Curran, 2017). When one considers that most young children play with toys up close to their faces and ears, this is an alarming threat.
Manufacturers of battery-operated toys are not required to put dBA ratings on the box. Parents can try to test the loudness of the toy while in the store, but the toy never sounds as loud in the store as it does at home. The best way to combat noise-induced hearing loss from battery-operated toys is to simply leave them on the shelf. However, if you must buy such a toy, The Sight and Hearing Association urges parents to test the dBA rating with any free downloadable noise or sound level meter. If you have toys in your house now and do not want to get rid of them, at the very least ensure the toy is operating at the lowest volume level (if there is one), and if it is still too loud, tape the speaker up. The bottom line is that if a toy sounds too loud to you, it is undoubtedly too loud for your child.
Moving beyond battery-operated toys and devices
Parents who decide to rid their home of battery-operated toys and exclude or limit device use are making a decision that affects both their children and themselves. Not having battery-operated toys or devices readily accessible means that parents will, by default, have to be more engaged in their child’s day. This does not mean parents must spend the entire day entertaining and playing with their children. Instead, they should strive to provide access to toys and activities better designed to promote true play.
Over the years, parents have shared with me, as an SLP working with them on their child’s communication, that daily tasks or household chores are the most common reasons they give their children battery-operated toys and devices. They use the toys or devices to keep their children occupied and essentially out of their way, not realizing that daily chores and tasks are excellent opportunities for engagement and learning.
Rather than relying on battery-operated toys or devices to occupy your child, involve them in household tasks such as washing the dishes, folding laundry, making snacks, vacuuming, or cleaning. Give your child a developmentally appropriate job while they work alongside you rather than engaging in passive, sedentary, and non-educational experiences provided by devices.
Make play your superpower
Are you ready to move beyond battery-powered toys and digital devices and enhance your child’s play? Looking for more creative and inspiring ideas on how to encourage true play? I can help. Check out the great resources below and follow me on Facebook and LinkedIn or visit my website for more ideas.
Donna Davies, Speech Language Pathologist
Donna has helped hundreds of children say their first words, overcome their speech sound delay and when others had given up, helped young adolescents master the /r/ sound. After a long career in health, Donna established a private practice focused on what she loves most, speech sound disorders and early language delay. Donna’s style of not “just doing therapy”, but rather empowering parents to develop the skills they need to help their child at home through personalized coaching, teaching and mentoring makes her approach unique. Donna has won the award for Best Speech Pathologist for 2 consecutive years in the city where she lives. She proudly holds 5-star ratings from the families of the children she has had the privilege of helping become talkers, and talkers that can be understood.
Parent Resources:
Everything you need to learn about play – why it’s important, why you should do it and why you should encourage it in your child.
Which Toy for Which Child? A Consumer’s Guide for Selecting Suitable Toys
An older guide that remains relevant, detailing how children play at different ages, along with their abilities, and interests and suggesting suitable toy options.
Hundreds of articles, resources and expert tips for families.
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