A toy that kills. Why is playing with a constructor useful? Dangerous construction set with magnetic balls

I found this call on the internet. The children themselves are playing with a magnetic construction set, but nevertheless, once again I had a professional conversation.

This applies to everyone who has children, nephews, grandchildren, children of friends and acquaintances!!
I know that I’m to blame for my son, I have to live with it, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to keep track of when a child eats a ball with a diameter of 5 mm.

The neocube toy was bought for the eldest daughter Ira when the family did not yet have a small one.
from Wikipedia:
NeoCube is a construction toy, usually consisting of 216 (6³) identical spherical neodymium magnets (an alloy of neodymium, iron and boron).
The diameter of each ball is 5 mm, the balls are quite heavy for their small size, they have a very strong magnetic field. The toy has a standard warning of 3+. Now they have started making warnings 6+, 7+ (who has any imagination), on the original manufacturer’s website the limit is 14+.
If your child is 15 and the family has this toy, you cannot sleep peacefully!!!
When playing, it is necessary to make an effort to overcome the attraction of the balls; as a result, the ball slips out of your hands and is lost. Sometimes even I had to separate this ball from the general chain with my teeth, i.e. the ball was in my mouth, and I was already 35 then.
Dima swallowed 14 balls, not at once, but gradually. The scary thing about these balls is that when they enter the body, they are not excreted, like other swallowed foreign bodies, but by connecting with each other (the magnetic field is strong, as described above), they tighten the intestinal walls, forming an obstruction, because Their size is small, and the force of attraction is large, then, being attracted to each other, they push holes in the walls of the intestines and feces come out into the peritoneum.
Everyone's body is individual, for some children this happens for weeks, for others in 6 hours. The symptoms in this case are the most banal food poisoning; an ultrasound cannot detect these balls, only an x-ray. I don’t think there is any need to explain that taking an x-ray every time you feel sick is crazy.
When a child is operated on, the balls become magnetized to medical devices, thereby increasing the number of ruptures. Any amount swallowed, even just 1 ball, is a abdominal operation. Due to its weight/size, this ball itself is capable of making a hole in the internal organs without attraction to another.

Surgeons and resuscitators asked to warn as many people as possible about the danger this toy poses.

DO NOT BUY A NEOCUBE FOR YOUR OR OTHER CHILDREN OF ANY AGE unless, of course, you want them to die.

Almost every child injured by this toy has to be rescued. A lot of children from 1 to 15 years old are now hospitalized after swallowing these balls.

It is well known that activities with construction sets bring great pleasure to a young creator, but this is not the only benefit of construction sets for a child’s development.

When purchasing a toy set on the site, you can be sure of the benefits of the construction set for children's development.

Why is it useful for children to play with construction sets?

1. Interaction with the geometric figures of the designer improves the child’s motor skills and coordination. By erecting bridges, building houses from wooden or plastic parts, the baby learns to control his body, move elements in such a way that the structure remains motionless and intact.
2. The simplest knowledge of physics, for example, the concept of gravity and balance, can also be developed while playing with a construction set. The baby learns to think logically while trying to build a strong structure.
3. Using a diagram, the child constantly switches attention from the drawing to the details, thanks to which perseverance, attentiveness, self-control, and spatial thinking are trained.


4. If the child improvises and assembles construction sets to his liking, he will develop imagination and imaginative thinking. Like an architect, a child will be able to implement any creative project.
5. Thanks to the children's construction set, the child gets acquainted with colors, geometric figures, and gets a first impression of different types of buildings and equipment.


6. Fine motor skills of the hands are also trained while playing with the parts of the set. A child's hand is developed every time the baby picks up a metal, plastic or wooden element.
7. Regardless of how complex the construction set is, your child will have a fun and interesting time playing. The most important condition when choosing a set on the website http://kingdomtoys.com.ua/toys/ is that the toy is suitable for the child’s age and matches the hobbies and tastes of the baby.
Assembling construction kit parts is useful for both the physical and mental development of the child. The kid will get to know the laws of logic and physics in the process of creating a toy fortress, radio-controlled car or doll house from small blocks. In the process of designing, the child improves his playing skills, learns to be attentive and diligent, and takes his first steps in creativity and design.
Katerina Vasilenkova

Every parent wants to please their child with an original educational toy, but not everyone knows that some of them can cause serious harm to the child’s health. First of all, it's about about magnets: magnetic balls, cubes, chains - toys consisting of several links that are magnetized to each other. Toys that pose a potential danger are battery operated toys.

Download:

Preview:

Be careful with magnetic construction sets and batteries.

Every parent wants to please their child with an original educational toy, but not everyone knows that some of them can cause serious harm to the child’s health.

First of all, it's about about magnets : magnetic balls, cubes, chains - toys consisting of several links that are magnetized to each other.When they enter the gastrointestinal tract, scattered magnetic balls begin to be attracted, which requires urgent surgical intervention.

The age of children swallowing magnets varies from 1 year to 10 years. This often happens: parents buy a magnetic toy for their older child, and the child plays with it and wants to taste everything. When purchasing a construction set, you must clearly explain the rules of the game to your older child. But sometimes older children play around - they put scattered balls in their mouths and accidentally swallow them. Therefore, doctors recommend not to buy magnetic toys at all for a home where there are preschool children. Design games like this should be for family games and only under the supervision of parents.When choosing a designer, give preference to large-shaped parts,The magnets must be well secured and not fall out.

If a child swallows a small plastic part, there are usually no problems; it comes out on its own. If the part is large and it gets stuck in the stomach, doctors may do a gastroscopy and remove it. But everything connected with a magnet and magnetic parts is extremely dangerous. In most cases, unfortunately, this ends in surgical treatment, which causes serious harm to the child’s health.

Other toys that pose a potential hazard include:battery operated toys.If a child can easily open the battery compartment cover, they may be able to remove the batteries and swallow them. The cover must be secured with a bolt.

Why are batteries dangerous for children?

Firstly, they are very difficult to remove usingfibrogastroscope. Round and slippery, they are not caught in the hook for removing foreign bodies; they slip out of the Dormia basket, forceps or loops available to the doctor. Therefore, the removal of foreign bodies in children is performed under general anesthesia.

Very dangerous for living tissues of the human bodylithium batteries. They accumulate a high-power energy charge. In the moist environment of the esophagus or stomach, a short circuit occurs between the poles, resulting in an electrical burn of the mucous membrane and deeper layers.

The longer the battery is in any part of the gastrointestinal tract, the higher the risk of its depressurization. At the same time, a strong alkali is released from it, which immediately enters into a chemical reaction and melts living tissue, causing the formation of deep ulcerative defects. This phenomenon is called electrochemical burn. In addition, other toxic components of the battery may be absorbed into the general bloodstream.

What to do if a child swallows a battery?

No matter how well a child who swallows a battery feels, it is requiredtransport to a surgical hospital as soon as possible, where the foreign body will be removed. You should not hope “at random” and risk the health and life of your child. Remember that this is a situation where, without exaggeration, every minute counts. If the baby is lucky and the harmful battery can be removed from the esophagus or stomach before it chemically melts, outpatient monitoring will be required. In more severe cases, hospitalization for several days may be required to monitor and timely detect serious complications.

I hope the information provided will help parents who decide to buy a magnetic construction set or electronic toy for their child to understand the full extent of the danger. This does not mean that children should not have modern educational games. But we, adults, are obliged to take care of their absolute harmlessness. After all, their, and therefore our, happy future depends on it.

I have been teaching robotics at the Palace of Children and Youth Creativity for five years now. When it all started, we had nothing of the word at all. There was an office and that was already good. Therefore, the first robot that the guys assembled was invented on the fly...

...from cardboard. This is a model of the well-known robot from a children's cartoon.

Much water has passed under the bridge since then, our association even received government funding, which was used to purchase fresh LEGO MindStorms construction sets and various tabletop machines, but my first-year students at the beginning of the year are still assembling a model of the Valli robot from cardboard. Then we add motors to it, assemble a control circuit with two transistors, install a light sensor, and the stylish robot is ready to drive along white stripes.
And these construction sets are still on the far shelf. Previously, I couldn’t understand why, I somehow avoided them on a subconscious level, but now I’ve managed to formalize and organize these thoughts.
I will briefly describe the construction sets: they are simple, capable of giving quick results, give the illusion of knowledge and skills, do not require any modifications (only the purchase of new elements) - all this makes the construction set an excellent interesting commercial product, which, however, can play a cruel joke on its happy owner.
So, why not LEGO:
1. Key feature of the designer – Simplification of the real world
The constructor is a set of various structural, power, measuring, and logical elements. The combination of these elements gives a quick and interesting result. Programming of constructors is carried out by placing intuitive visual blocks in a special program. What's wrong with this? Here's what: the child sees the result, but does not see the system behind the result - the blocks remain for him “black boxes” that function magically. Such things, if used incorrectly, can kill a child’s interest, which happens very often; it happens that parents buy a set, give it to the child and let him do it himself - this is the surest way to cut off the path for their child to technical sciences in the future. There are several reasons:
Firstly, a child who has already managed to assemble something electrical, functioning, almost alive, becomes filled with pride and refuses to do basic things - such as working with a ruler, compass, soldering iron, hacksaw, hammer, screwdriver...
Secondly, even if pride was overcome or did not arise, basic things cannot satisfy the child’s interest to the same extent as the construction set - in the absence of an immediate return on the invested effort, interest quickly disappears.
2. Creating the illusion of simplicity
It becomes clear to the child that robotics is simple: you take one thing and add another... Why study further if I already know what I can do? Needless to say, this entails the mythologization of technology and turns the child away from systematic exploration of the world. If you bought such a construction set for your child and ran out of permanent ones: “why?” - this is a very bad sign.
3. Alienation and specialization
The construction set is designed so that a child who does not understand anything about robotics can assemble robots. At the same time, the enormous work of the engineers who took care of the simplicity of the designer remains in the shadows; the child is under the delusion that he himself achieved everything. This is very consonant with the Western education system, when a specialist with the right ear knows nothing about the left, and kills the Russian natural desire for systematic knowledge of the world. Alexander Bogdanov with his Tectology intended exactly the opposite.
4. No need for additional knowledge
Yes, no knowledge is needed; in general, a child who has mastered such a construction set, having acquired a very small additional set of knowledge, can work as a highly specialized specialist in a number of areas of industry.
5. LEGO is an ideal consumer product that gives quick results through simple “vegetative” manipulations, while making with your own hands is a way to learn to overcome challenges, understand in detail and understand the world more deeply.
6. Using programming in Lego constructors - Discrediting the Charm of Programming for similar reasons.
As a result, such a designer fits into the aspirations of our officials from the Ministry of Education, who want to educate high-quality consumers, i.e. there shouldn't be any creativity.
What's the solution? The answer is simple - implementation is complex: You shouldn’t think that you can buy off a child with a construction set. The best option is to send your child to a technical creativity club, having previously talked with the leader; if this is not possible, then along with purchasing a construction set, you should spend enough time to direct the child’s interest in the right direction and neutralize its negative impact. You can neutralize the impact by filling out the empty form of the constructor

Modern children cannot be considered deprived of attention from manufacturers. Toy stores sell hundreds and thousands of different products, many of which may appeal to any child. And not all products turn out to be truly useful. It would seem, how can a designer harm a child? It all depends on what material was used to produce this construction set and what basic principles underlie its production. A magnetic construction set, capable of providing the broadest opportunities for creativity, as medical data has shown in recent years, can cause irreparable harm to a child’s health, affecting his condition until adulthood. But at the same time, you shouldn’t panic and give up such a wonderful toy: not all magnetic construction sets pose a real danger to the baby.

The reason for the decisive rejection of magnetic construction sets was the data of doctors, which concerned tragic cases with children associated with playing with magnetic construction sets made from an alloy of neodymium, boron and iron. This alloy is ideal for creating various magnetic structures: the strength of the magnet is so great that the usual connection of hundreds of metal balls, which usually cannot be held in place even with the help of Moment glue, can easily retain its shape for days only thanks to the super-strong magnetic properties of the alloy. But these properties, combined with the features of the parts of such designers, can cause serious problems. Small children who prefer to explore the world not only with their hands, but also with their mouths, can easily swallow such a ball - it is shiny, in the mouth in the first minutes it creates an interesting sensation of metallic coolness, and, after playing too much, the child can accidentally swallow such a ball. If he swallows one ball, there is no cause for concern: it will come out during a bowel movement. The danger is represented by several balls, which can begin to attract each other as they move through the intestines. Are they in the same part of the intestine? The baby is destined for unpleasant sensations. But the worst thing will be if they are in different parts of the intestine and also begin to attract each other. This can lead to pinching of intestinal tissue and necrosis. Further, we think there is no need to talk about possible consequences. Therefore, we strongly recommend purchasing such construction sets only for older children, provided that they never fall into the hands of children.

However, such terrible consequences of playing with magnetic construction sets are not yet a reason to abandon them. Several years ago, manufacturers took into account the comments from doctors, and today there are many interesting magnetic construction toys on the market that can be given to even the smallest children. Stores selling children's goods in St. Petersburg and other cities offer magnetic construction sets with large parts, which also contribute to the development of a child's imagination and fine motor skills, and can even be very interesting for older children. The parts of such construction sets are so large that even with a strong desire they cannot be stuffed into your mouth, but at the same time, you can create unusual structures from them; some can be connected to a motor, as well as equipped with LEDs. Of course, the prices for such construction sets cannot be called low, but they can last for many years.