Dana Obleman:  Hi. I’m Dana Obleman. Welcome to this week’s video chat. Today, I want to talk a little bit about crib toys. I get asked often what my opinion and thoughts are around things like mobiles, and those aquariums, and all the other little things that you can attach to the side of a crib. I am not a fan.

I think the toy companies are just kind of grasping at straws, at this point, on where they can stick more toys. When you think about it, if you’re trying to send a message to your baby that whenever you put him in this particular location, what you want him to do is sleep, but yet you’re bombarding him with all kinds of noise, and visual stimulation. You can see how that might be a fairly confusing message you’re sending.

What can happen too is, even if your baby is just calmly staring up at his mobile watching it very intently, what really is happening is his brain is kind of getting overstimulated. At the time when we want him to wind down, relax, and calm his brain, we’re actually kind of winding him up. I would suggest that mobiles have a time and a place, for sure. You can find ones that attach to, maybe like a play apparatus in the living room, or when you’re changing a diaper, for example.

Babies do love to see colors and movement, and I think it’s a great idea in very specific time periods. Aquariums, again, I’m not a fan of anything that turns on and then turns off. My worry is if your baby gets used to falling asleep to the sounds of the aquarium, and then somewhere through the night realizes, “Hey, where are those sounds”? it might cause a wake‑up.

It can become a bit of a sleep prop. If you’re used to falling asleep with a certain sound or visual, and then halfway through the night it’s gone, you can see how that might be a bit upsetting to a baby and cause some wake‑ups. However, I do have a crib toy fan, and that is a “Lovie.” I think that a Lovie, a little soft, stuffed toy of some kind, is a great attachment object for any baby over a certain age.

Recommendations are somewhere around the sixth or seventh month. It’s OK to introduce a small, stuffed, soft toy of some kind, so that your baby can use it to cuddle, chew on, or to bat around the crib is a common one, as well. That really becomes a nice thing that he can take with him when he goes to grandma’s house, when he starts daycare. It’s a piece of comfort, kind of like a pillow.

It’s not anything you need to worry about. Eventually, your child will transition out of their Lovie. My son, around the age of ten, decided that was enough of his Lovie, and he handed it over to me to put on a shelf somewhere. It was bit of a sad day for me to see him growing up and not needing his Lovie anymore. That is the only crib toy. There should only be one. A child will not form an attachment to a particular Lovie, if there’s three or four in the crib.

What can happen with that is, three or four becomes five or six, becomes nine or ten, and pretty soon there’s really no room left for this baby to sleep in the crib, because there’s so many toys in there. So, one Lovie. Everything else, find a place for it somewhere else in the house, not the crib, so you can send a message that, “when I put you here, I want you to sleep.” Thanks for watching. Sleep well.