Looking for the Best Toys for Children with Special Needs:

A look a several companies focusing on toys for special needs children

by Daniel Sean Kaye

Children are children, it doesn’t matter if they have a disability. Likewise, parents of children with disabilities want to find toys their children will enjoy, just like any other parent. The difference may be that the child with a disability may need or respond better to toys made specifically with his or her challenges in mind.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, “The task of finding the right toy that is not only age-appropriate but will also accommodate the needs of a child with a disability, falls in the hands of parents and family members who want nothing more than to please their child or grandchild.” Trying to go through the thousands of toys that exist to find the one that best matches the child’s abilities can be difficult.

In searching for toys for children with different needs, several organizations and sites stand out.

The Adaptive Child (www.adaptivechild.com)
Created in 2003 by a mother who could not find appropriate toys for her autistic child, this site offers many active play toys for children with special needs. The toys entertain children while they address the sensory experience, teach balance and coordination, and enhance gross motor development. They include active play toys, soft activity centers, ball pits, balance tools, oversized building blocks, rainy day items, large snap-wall playsets, acrylic mirrors, tricycles and scooters, tents and tunnels, and products based on vestibular input—the sensation of movement and vibration.

The people who run this site say they look for “innovative, hard to find, high-quality products, and then rigorously test them for performance and value.” They also offer a guarantee on all items.

AblePlay (www.ableplay.org)
This toy-rating system and Web site offers some pretty comprehensive information on toys for children with special needs. It was created by the National Lekotek Center (http://www.lekotek.org), a non-profit organization that works with children with disabilities and provides parents and professionals with appropriate product information.

According to AblePlay, the site’s independent toy reviews and information go beyond normal product comments. The reviews help adults better understand each toy’s features by explaining the skills that may be improved by using the toy. The toys are listed in disability categories—physical, sensory communicative, and cognitive—and the site’s star-ratings let readers know the products that work really well in a given disability category and the ones that do not.

TFH Special Needs Toys (www.specialneedstoys.com)
TFH Special Needs Toys (formerly Toys for the Handicapped), which started in 1984, considers itself a focused resource for fun products that help people with disabilities to enjoy life and achieve more. The site offers a huge range of special needs toys, broken down into categories such as: noisy toys, building,puzzles, gadgets, moving parts, and moving lights. Many items are very reasonably priced, with higher-end, more complex items available as well.

Dragonfly Toys (www.dragonflytoys.com)
Like the above sites, Dragonfly Toys assembles its catalog based on various categories. These include: basic skills (listen, look); creative skills (making music, arts & crafts); exploring senses (multi-sensory, sound); furniture (play, positioning); games (board games, cards); and hands-on play (amazing mazes, build).

Fisher-Price and Let’s Play! (www.fisher-price.com/US/special_needs)
Fisher-Price, one of the world’s leading toy companies, has entered into a partnership with Let’s Play! Projects, a federally-funded program that supports play and activities for children with special needs. This site offers toys in categories such as: seeing, hearing, manipulating toys, thinking and learning, moving, and talking. According to the project’s literature, the categories emphasize play stages rather than ages “because all children develop at different rates.” These stages include: “The Experience Stage,” in which the child uses his senses to explore the toy; “The Discover Stage,” in which the child finds out what the toy does and what he or she can do with it; and “The Expanding Imagination Stage,” in which the child uses imagination to realize more ways to interact with the toy.

KidScope Toys (www.kidscopetoys.com)
This Online toy store specializes in toys and resources for autistic and special needs children. There is also information for parents, teachers, and therapists, such as informed instruction on product usage. The company, run by child therapists, specially selects toys based on therapeutic and developmental applications. The site’s toy categories include: fine motor, gross motor, construction, language, daily living skills, sensory, and pretend. There are also a variety of helpful autism articles and resources.

Play Works (www.playworks.net)
This Online toy store has a very developed special needs section, run by Christina Wallerstein, the mother of a special needs child. The section is divided into categories: distraction toys, which allow children to remove themselves from stressful situations and be immersed in play; light-up toys, which provide visual feedback and stimulation to both low vision and sighted children; sound toys, which offer: auditory feedback as well as enhance language and motor skills, development of spatial intelligence, and understanding of cause-and-effect; texture toys, which use touch to explore objects and to teach words to describe them; oral-motor toys, which help the development of oral motor skills necessary for eating and speech; and multi-purpose toys, which help with motor, language, and cognitive development.

Fat Brain Toys (www.fatbraintoys.com)
The site is all about finding toys that are best suited to helping people with different abilities to be joyful, challenged mentally, and aided in their development. The experts on this site offer articles, recommended toys , where to go for expanded information, and much more. The categories in this site include: autism, brain injury, cognition, independence, fine- and gross-motor skills, relaxation, socialization, and the sensory activities of sight, sound, and touch.

Looking for items that best suit a child with special needs necessitates a better understanding of those needs and some research. These sites can help you identify the attributes a specific child will need and can match you to a quality toy that can aid in the child’s development and joy.