What are your child's favorite materials, colours and toys?

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Hey Everyone!

-WARNING, long post ahead!-

My name is Jacquelyn Ryles-Smith and i am currently studying at Monash University, completing my final honours year research project.

I have always been interested in creating products for children and decided for my honours project i would like to develop a product that would benefit a child, specifically a child on the autism spectrum. Through my research i became stuck on the point that forming a relationship between parent and child is essential in development and that due to the nature of autism it can sometimes be hard or challenging to form relationships.

I am half way through my project and am developing a toy that hopes to aid parents and children on the spectrum in creating engagement and communication in a playful situation, while creating a sensory stimulation for the child.

I have decided to develop a toy that would be used in conjunction with the therapy floortime. The product would consist of:
- a weighted plush toy, that i am describing as a weighted toy companion. The companion has long arms and legs which are weighted that can wrap around the child. the shape and gender of the toy is intended to be ambiguous so that the child may imprint their own thoughts onto the toy.

- a fabric book, containing various small plush toys that can be tailored towards he childs likes. This book is larger than A2 and has ambiguous shapes and colours sewn onto the pages to create landscapes so that the child and parent can get onto the floor and use the plush toys to go through stages of floortime in a fun environment. The plush toys would consists of various things, such as scenery or dinosaurs or pirates or fairies depending on the childs likes and dislikes, i would like this component of the design to be open and customiseable, the toys would be made of different colours or textures, and could contain elements like lights or sounds.

- and a system that would be delivered online. This would be a website that would sell the product, but also contain a forum, blog posts, FAQs, about autism sections, to open up a community that revolves around the product.

These items would be used in conjunction with floor time therapy, allowing a child to express themselves and having the parent join in on the expression. Hoping to allow a child and parent to connect on a level the child is capable and comfortable with, creating an open channel for communication.

I was wondering if anyone might provide some answers to the following questions:
What materials and colours your child might prefer in toys?
Does your child like plush/soft toys, and if they do like soft toys what are they?

Thank you in advance! Your help is really appreciated!

Jacquelyn Ryles-Smith
Monash University

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I don't know if your educational speciality is in the realm of business or therapy or what it is but here are my thoughts, for what it is worth:

I think you are aiming to do too much with one product. I cannot imagine any one product no matter how customizable you plan to make it to suit all autistic children. I also do not know what developmental age you are aiming for, but no way one product will suit all developmental stages.

When my son was very little I did all this research about brain development (for neurotypicals kids, natch) and was planning to get some well-acclaimed sensory toy for brain development. The store did not have it, so we ended up with a plush beach ball that he wrapped himself around when my husband handed it to him to see if he would like it. So, that was what we bought.

Good thing we did not buy the sensory toy, because it would have scared the heck out of him. We did buy him one of those books with the different things to touch, and he refused to touch any of the touchable textured parts. Turns out he has serious sensory aversions. We bought the set of 4 Baby Einstein sensory blocks. He was terrified of two of them because of the noises they made. The other two made no noise. Even though one of the noise-making toys was fairly difficult to trigger unless you wanted to, and had other play aspects to them, he refused to play with it, in any capacity once scared of it. It would not have mattered, I don't think, if the noise apparatus was removable, as he would have associated the toy with the noise, regardless.

He also refused to play with any toy that had a face. He liked cash register toys, because they had numbers and were really calculators. His favorite "toy" these days at 11, is a graphing calculator. He liked toy cell phones (but preferred real ones--still does) and liked toys with letters and numbers. Later on when his sensory issues were less aversive, he also liked silly noises.

He would not have wanted the toy to hug him; as he loves hugs but only from real people b/c I think he needs the naturally resulting oxytocin from contact with actual, living beings. He also liked things that spin like ceiling fans. He did not do typical pretend play and fairies or pirates would not have meant anything to him, and still wouldn't.

If I were going to design the one toy to rule them all, for him, it would be a multi-colored toy with an analog clock, a digital clock, a huge, tall spinner, a detachable cell phone, a panel with bottons for activating noises and lights(he loves them now--but hated them before--, something to stretch that bounces back and can be stretched back out again, a calculator, an abacus, and maybe alphabet and number puzzles with letters and numbers and math operators that could be used for making words and doing math. This product would lose tons of money b/c not enough demand would exist for it.

I don't know how much commonality you are going to find, but it is hard for me to imagine everything being in just one toy.

When my son was younger, he liked anything with wheels. He liked to roll things back and forth, and would lie down to see the wheels spin. He also liked those ride on toys. They are plastic cars that little kids can ride that have little things to play with on them as well, and you could store things in the seat.He had one with a shape sorter on the front, but only played with it once when he first got it, but he rode on the toy everywhere he went. He also liked musical toys. He had a Mozart Magic Cube that he loved, a bongo drum, a xylophone, and another little keyboard. When he was not rolling things, he would turn his ride on truck upside down, play along to the Mozart Magic Cube with his instruments, and spin the wheels of the upside down ride on toy.

He did like plush toys later (like 4), but liked stuffed animals. Mostly stuffed cats. He still like plush toys, and he now likes plush dinosaurs.

I do think he would have liked a weighted plushy.

Oh, yeah, I forgot about that, my son loved his shape sorter, too. Toys designed to make towers or be lined up, would be good, though my son used blocks for towers, and made lines out of pretty much everything.

Another thing I thought if is I know why the OP would think an amorphous being would be a good idea, I am wondering if kids with issues with symbolic play would have trouble with that level of abstraction.

My son did not like dolls or stuffed animals for the most part anyway, but for kids who do, I would assume it unless the child was really good at symbolic play, it would not work too well. The few times my son was receptive to these they were pretty specific ie. I basically had to make my own Q-bert stuffy for him, and he was pretty good at symbolic play actually.

Heh. We have Fruit Ninja plushies and Garfield, which he liked, and a couple of others he liked enough to hold a few times. He really did like the Q-bert, though. He actually slept with that one; I couldn't believe it.