WTHR – Indianapolis News and Weather – Indiana girl swallows magnets, needs surgery:

Indiana girl swallows magnets, needs surgery
Updated: May 23, 2008 05:44 PM

This story angers me, but not for the obvious reasons.

I actually saw this first on a news clip over on Comcast.net’s “The Fan”. First I was concerned as to how a child could knowingly consume THIRTY magnets. One of the first questions the news anchor asked was “Why did you eat them?” The girl’s reply? “I thought they were candy.” That stopped me right there. My first thought is “Magnets taste like METAL. Maybe these were plastic colored pieces, shaped weird and can be mistaken like candy.” Then they show the magnet toys. They look like ball-bearings. Yes, they vaguely look like those small hard sugar candy balls you sometimes see on cupcakes at Christmas-time, but these things are about as big as a nickel (or larger, the pictures are kinda hard to judge the size), and are obviously metal. I’ve tasted magnets before, and they don’t taste anything like candy. Metal doesn’t taste good at all.

So the the girl’s adopted (I assume) father continued to talk and my irritation continues to rise. I couldn’t finish it, so I went searching for a print news article and found the one above. My irritation rose as I read the article, not for what it really said, but how it was stated. It insinuates the blame falls with the toy, but if you read between the lines, this orphanage even told the family that this girl has problems:

“She’s only been in America three years and while she was in Russia, which is where she is from, in the orphanage she ate, they told us she ate everything she could get her hands on,” said Lents.

Now, knowing this, why did the father give her a toy composed of small, easily swallowed pieces? My niece is somewhat the same, she will put just about ANYTHING in her mouth. We keep this in mind and don’t buy her things she could possibly eat.

At the end of the article I see the words I was expecting to see and I nearly see red: But Haley’s father wants the toy off the market for good.

Oh for the love of god, accept some responsibility! It is the parent’s responsibility to make sure the child knows that it is a toy. Be there when they open the package, tell them what it is, get down and maybe even play with them and show them how it works. TELL THEM NOT TO EAT IT. The sheer fact that she claims she thought it was candy tells you that her parents didn’t tell her it was a toy. More likely than not they gave it to her and went about their business. And if the child DOES eat it even after you tell them not to, don’t blame the toy, blame the child. I’m sorry but most eight year olds know not to eat their toys.

Seeing things like this just angers me to no end. Bad parenting is what this is, nothing more. Now an innocent toy is being blamed for it. I’m tempted to go buy a set of this just out of spite…

..ok.. it looks fun to play with too… >_>