Representation Station: Children’s Toys

Over the last few years, more and more disability representation has made its way into mainstream media and culture, especially where it concerns children. In this series, we’ll highlight categories where we’ve seen significant disability representation and share more about what’s available, who it’s impacting, and why it’s important.

In this installment, we highlight toy companies that include disability and diversity representation in their products. If you want to include disability in your children’s toys at home, within your classroom at school, or in gifts for family and friends, here are four inclusive companies that we recommend.

LEGO

In 2016 the biggest toymaker in the world finally listened to the social change campaigns that had been running for years to bring more inclusive toys to the industry and created Lego’s first disabled minifigure. A wheelchair-using man became part of the Lego CITY set that hit shelves in late 2016. Since then, the company has vastly expanded their disability representation to include a wheelchair accessible bus, wheelchair-using parents, and figurines using other mobility aids. The Lego CITY set is especially awesome because the set is marketed as a regular cityscape with shops and restaurants, while also including an accessible bus and ramp. This allows children who are playing with the toy set to view disability as part of the human experience and allow them to role play with accessibility. Hopefully this sparks their thoughts and allows them to transfer their questions into the real world when they encounter accessibility throughout their day.

Barbie by Mattel

When most adults think back on childhood they can probably recall an instance where they played with Barbies; at school, at a friend’s house, or at home, as Mattel is one of the oldest and most well known toy companies on the planet. In 2019, Barbie launched their Fashionistas line to include both racially diverse and also ability diverse dolls. Barbie collaborated with 13 year old disability activist Jordan Reeves, who was born without a left forearm, to create a Barbie doll with a prosthetic limb that can be removed, modeling a realistic play experience. In a CNN article, Curt Decker, executive director of the National Disability Rights Network, said “he hopes the new dolls can remove stigmas surrounding disabilities and show kids that there is ‘nothing wrong’ with people who have them.” A disabled child that goes down the toy aisles at any major store previously would not come across a doll that looks like them or that uses any of the mobility aids or medical equipment they use...until now! This representation can be life changing for a child within an inaccessible world where they constantly feel ‘othered.’

Lakeshore Learning

Lakeshore Learning is a business that creates high quality educational and play toys that include ability diversity within the hundreds of toys they sell. They make figurines that include guide dogs, canes, wheelchairs, hearing aids, and walkers. What is even cooler is that they have two sets of these figurines, one made from squeezable soft plastic, and the other larger sized plastic, so that a child has diverse toys from an early age through their elementary school years. They also offer adaptive equipment that can fit on any large doll which includes both mobility and medical equipment. This kit also includes a teacher’s guide that explains the purpose of each piece of equipment and how to discuss it with children. This kit would be a perfect addition to any classroom to start and continue the conversation around disability!

A Doll Like Me

Dolls are an important tool in imaginative play because they help children make sense of their world. They can help children cope with stressful situations and, most importantly, they can help a child feel confident in who they are. Because of that, A Doll Like Me believes dolls should look like the children who love them. The non-profit was created by a woman who was asked to sew a doll for a child because no dolls in the toy store looked like them. This morphed into sewing hundreds of custom dolls for children with limb differences, mobility aids, facial differences, and other disabilities. In society as a whole we tend to downplay how lack of representation plays out in a child’s life, socially and emotionally. As A Doll Like Me states best “WHO we see and HOW we see them makes a difference to a child's emotional development and growth.”

If you are looking to continue your search for toys, check out #ToyLikeMe, a non profit organization that aims to encourage companies within the toy industry to include products created for and representative of disabled children, and also products that adopt universal design principles.

For more in our Representation Station series, check out this post on adaptive clothing for children.