No Child's Play

Fun is one thing, safety is another. Find out how you can protect your kid from dangerous play.

It’s that time of the year when your kids look forward to unwrapping their favourite toys for Christmas.

While they deserve the joy that such playthings bring, it’s also timely to remember that toys can sometimes pose very real health hazards.

In fact, toy-related injuries account for more than 500 cases that the KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital’s (KKH) department of emergency medicine sees each year, says a report in The Straits Times (ST).

Many of these injuries occur in children under five years old – of these, about half of the cases involve those aged one to three.

Dr Chong Shu-Ling, a physician with KKH, tells ST: “Although the majority of these injuries are minor, some are serious and have led to surgery or hospitalisation.”

Here’s what you must know about common toy safety risks:

CHOKING

This is the biggest toy safety concern, Dr Kao Pao Tang, head and senior consultant at the children’s emergency department of National University Hospital (NUH) tells ST.

Toys sometimes come apart because of bad design or misuse. The result: small parts, beads, or Lego bricks end up in a child’s mouth or become lodged in her nostrils or ears.

In his ST interview, Dr Chong gave the example of a two-year-old boy who was left to play unsupervised, and had pulled out the button eyes of his rabbit soft toy.

He popped one button into his mouth but didn’t like how it tasted. He then accidentally inserted it into his nose, and had to be taken to the hospital.