Presents for toddlers: what to avoid

Safety standards check small parts with a test cylinder: neither the toy nor any piece that comes off it may fit inside completely. At home, a toilet roll tube gets you close — it's a little wider than the test cylinder, so the home test errs on the strict side rather than the lenient one. Put every new toy through it before you wrap it.

A swallowed bead is a mechanical problem: either it passes or it doesn't. A lithium button battery is a chemical problem. When it lodges in the oesophagus, it creates conditions around itself that burn the tissue from the inside, and it only needs hours to do it. A flat battery from a remote control can do this too — even a voltage too low to run the toy any more is enough to cause damage.

The riskiest items aren't the toys you think about when you're shopping, but the things around them: light-up sneakers and bracelets, books that flash and play tunes, musical greeting cards, digital thermometers, remote controls, kitchen scales, LED tea lights, key rings, the bathroom scales. They make their way into the nursery as presents nobody thinks of as toys, so they never get checked.

So when you're buying, look at one thing above all: the battery cover must be held by a screw. The second thing is labelling — a toy with no brand and no traceable manufacturer is exactly the kind of item where nobody tested the small parts or the battery cover, and it's the kind that later gets recalled. Before you buy, it's worth checking Product Safety Australia's recalls. Store spare batteries out of reach, just like medicines, and don't leave used ones lying in the bin at home.

If you suspect your child has swallowed a battery, ring the Poisons Information Centre on 13 11 26 at once — the line is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from anywhere in Australia — and follow their advice. Don't wait to see whether anything happens. Don't let your child eat or drink and don't try to make them vomit; keep the battery packaging or the toy itself, because the size tells the doctors what to look for. If your child is unconscious, not breathing or struggling to breathe, call Triple Zero (000) straight away. The other safety checks for this age group are covered in our article on safe presents for the littlest ones.

A soft toy is the most common present for a small child — and the thing every nursery has the most of. Yet a child bonds with one, two at the most. The rest are scenery that nobody cuddles but everybody tidies, washes and moves from the bed to the floor.

The problem isn't one teddy bear, it's the pattern: a soft toy is a present you can't get wrong, so it's what everyone reaches for when they don't have time to think. The result is a basket where your child can't find anything, because in a heap of twenty equally squishy things there's nothing left to discover. And the more soft toys there are, the less often the one that really matters gets washed.

Rather than adding to the pile, it's more practical to thin it out: pop some of the soft toys in a box in the wardrobe and swap them for the ones on display every few weeks. Your child greets the “new” ones as if they'd just been given them. And when the choice is yours and you want a present that won't vanish into the pile within a year, look for something with your child's name inside — a book where they're the hero, for example. No batteries, no small parts, 12 illustrated spreads, and the digital version is usually ready within 15 minutes. Presents that outlast the toy years are the subject of our article on keepsake gifts for a first birthday.

The last category isn't dangerous, just quiet about its downside. You can spot it with a single question: who's actually active during play? When a toy talks, sings, flashes and drives around on its own, all that's left for your child is pressing a button and watching. Before you buy something like that, put it through four tests.

Lists of don'ts tend to keep growing, so for the record, here's the other side. Plastic isn't automatically worse than wood — what matters is the size of the parts, how firmly they're joined and the labelling, not the material; a wooden toy with glued-on eyes is more dangerous than a properly moulded plastic cup. Second-hand toys from friends are fine, just give them the same once-over as new ones, because they've been through a few extra washes.

Worrying that your child will get “too few” presents doesn't get you anywhere either: a child under three can't compare the number of parcels, but they can tell how much time someone spent with them. And a toy your child puts aside after a week isn't a wasted present — some things simply suit three months of development and then get outgrown. The only real mistake is the one you could have seen coming.

The hardest part of “what to avoid” isn't the choosing, it's telling grandparents, godparents and friends in a way that doesn't sound like criticism. These three messages are ready to copy and send.