With the Christmas season upon us, there's been a lot in the media lately about toys and toy safety. All this attention to toys has caused me to give some thought to what I've learned about the subject since I became a parent five years ago.

Here is what I have learned about toys:

The kid who shows up at the playground with a pair of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle nunchucks and a face mask will hit your kid over the head with the nunchucks within one hour's time, no matter how well behaved he appears at first.

I learned this the hard way. When the kid with the nunchucks showed up at the playground, my son, who is 5, immediately started playing with him. I wondered if I should take him to a different part of the playground, but didn't because the kid with the nunchucks was acting really well behaved.

And he did act really well behaved, until about 45 minutes passed and I heard my son crying and turned around to see him holding his head. The kid with the nunchucks had hit him over the head with them. Thankfully, my son was OK. The kid's mother, obviously mortified, left with the kid and the nunchucks immediately.

My advice to parents: Please do not buy toys like this, and if you do, keep them at home. And if another kid shows up at the playground with a toy like this, trust your instincts and take your kid to another part of the playground.

The debate about toy guns is almost moot.

I've never bought my sons toy guns, mostly because I realized early on that there is no reason to do so. When my oldest son was 21/2, he started taking the curved pieces of wooden train tracks from his train set and pretending they were guns. He stuck them in his pockets and carried them almost everywhere. Once we were at the Santa Fe County Fair and a woman looked down at the train track sticking out of his pants (he didn't carry concealed) and said, "I like your gun."

My son smiled and looked at her as if to say, "How did you know?" Then she pointed to her 12- or 13-year-old son who was nearby and said he used to do the same thing.

This has caused me to think that — the debate over toy guns promoting violence aside — kids who aren't bought toy guns will pretend that just about anything is a toy gun. So why not save yourself $10 bucks and not buy a toy gun?

Toys are a good way to teach your kids about getting a job.

I learned this most recently when I weakened and bought my sons, ages 5 and nearly 3, Transformer action figures. Within an hour, the nearly
3-year-old had broken his into small parts, causing me to throw it away. Within a day, I had also tossed the other Transformer into the trash for the same reason. My 5-year-old was pretty upset, but got over it quickly.

The next day he asked me, "So when I'm 18, I can buy anything I want?"

"Yes," I told him.

"I can buy all the Transformers I want?" he said.

"Yes," I told him. "And in fact, you don't have to wait until you're 18. As soon as you get your own job, and your brother is old enough so he won't choke on small parts, you can buy all the Transformers you want."

"OK," he said, smiling.

Accidents with toys can happen at any time.

I learned this lesson about two years ago when my son inexplicably got his foot caught in a plastic toy front loader. We had to call the fire department to have the firefighters cut it off his foot. This was another instance where, thankfully, he was OK. I later checked the recall list for toys, and didn't find the loader on the list. But I have to say I didn't expect to find it there. He got his foot caught in the loader by standing on it, and to this day, I don't know how he did it.

Checking the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission's recall list for toys won't tip you to every toy that could be problematic, but it's definitely the place to start.

Picked-up toys are played-with toys.

I learned this from a volunteer at the Children's Museum of Albuquerque, who explained that it was her job that day to go around and clean up all the toys. Kids are more likely to play with toys if they're cleaned up, she explained, and it made sense after I thought about it. Kids take an inherent joy in messing things up.

I do my best to keep the toys cleaned up at home, but I can't say I always succeed. I do think, however, that parents might be more inclined to save money on new toys if they picked up the ones the kids have.

So that's my two cents on toys this Christmas shopping season. Be careful out there, and have fun!

Contact Wendy Brown at 986-3072 or wbrown@sfnewmexican.com.