The story below is from our November/December 2019 issue. For the full issue Subscribe today, view our FREE interactive digital edition or download our FREE iOS app!
Children with disabilities can now see themselves in toys thanks to a United Kingdom nonprofit and a Roanoke College teaching associate.
Leila Nichols was born with a rare condition that severely delays her development. The 10-year-old has a visual impairment, a gastrostomy or G-tube, motor skills challenges and a wheelchair, a result of GRIN1- related neurodevelopmental disorder.
Several years ago, Leila received a Barbie doll wearing glasses and sitting in a plastic wheelchair as part of a toy drive for her class at Oak Grove Elementary School in Roanoke County. Her mother, Stacey Nichols, knew the doll was a hit when she saw Leila rolling the wheelchair and putting parts of it in her mouth.
“She had never had a toy like that before,” Nichols says. “It helps them to recognize the value of themselves, to see a toy like them out in the world.”
Leila has other toys that look like her now, such as a stuffed lion with glasses and a G-tube.
These unique toys are the work of a Roanoke College biology teaching associate and an enterprise - Toy Like Me - that she has been building since 2016.
It began in 2015 while Frances Bosch was doing research for a May term class that she planned to teach at the college. In the course, students would learn about disabilities and how individuals live with them.
She learned about a nonprofit organization in the United Kingdom called Toy Like Me that advocates for manufacturers globally to create toys that represent children with disabilities.
Courtesy of Roanoke College
It hit a chord with Bosch, whose own life has been impacted by disabilities.
Before Roanoke College, she worked in school systems, clinics and home settings with children with special needs in Canada. Also, several members of her family have disabilities.
Bosch decided to include a toy modification activity in her May term class.
She gathered stuffed animals, superheroes, Barbie and Ken dolls, and other toys, along with jelly chords, pieces of fabric, earring loops and buttons that could be fitted onto the toys to resemble certain medical needs. Superheroes got cochlear implants, stuffed elephants were fitted with G-tubes, Barbie received hearing aids and more.
The toys went to 30 children at Carilion Clinic Children’s Hospital in Roanoke.
The event was so successful that Bosch organized a holiday toy drive that fall. She collected about $1,600 in donations from a Roanoke College sorority, faculty and staff and the community to buy toys. Volunteers modified toys the week of Thanksgiving, in time for Christmas deliveries.
Since then, Toy Like Me has given away 1,000 modified toys. And it keeps growing. The Roanoke College group is now an official chapter of Toy Like Me, with several goals: to include children in society by helping them see themselves reflected in toys; to provide support for families, and toys for therapists and medical teams to help children learn about their condition; and to create a community of college students with an inclusion mindset.
Courtesy of Roanoke College
The toys go everywhere, mostly to local schools and hospitals. Bosch receives toy requests for individual children and large groups. All toys are new and purchased tax-free due to Roanoke College’s nonprofit status.
Each requester supplies Bosch with specific details about a child, such as age, gender, skin color, the child’s disability, equipment used and their interests. She creates a toy kit for each request, assigns it a tracking number and gives it to a volunteer for modifying. Bosch does much of the work herself.
She is very detailed in the toys she selects. For example, stuffed animals are for children age three and younger and for those who suffer from seizures, because the toys are soft. This past summer, Bosch outfitted a stuffed dragon with foam orthotics for a two-year-old child who has seizures.
“I need to know how to make the toy safe for the child,” said Bosch, whose office at Roanoke College is packed with toys. “I want to make sure that I’m meeting the safety standards.”
During the school year, Bosch and a new Toy Like Me club, formed by students at Roanoke College, schedule toy modification days, typically near a holiday. Students and community members attend.
Toy Like Me is preparing for another Christmas toy drive this year. In the past year, the group gave $3,000 worth of toys to children in the United States and in other countries, including Uzbekistan, Bosch says.
Hallie Manchester, a Roanoke College senior and member of the Toy Like Me club, helps organize numerous toy drops off and modification days.
“The kids are just so excited to have someone pay special attention to them,” says Manchester.
The toys are also educational. Tina Berg, a child life specialist in the hematology and oncology unit at UVA’s Children’s Hospital, says she gives Toy Like Me dolls and stuffed animals to children who receive certain medical treatments. If a child receives a G-tube, for instance, Berg gives them a stuffed animal that also wears a G-tube.
Courtesy of Roanoke College
“It helps them to feel a little more normal,” says Berg, who uses the toys to talk with children about their conditions. “Sometimes they talk through their stuffed animal or doll.”
Eventually, Bosch would like for Toy Like Me to become a 501(c)(3) organization. The group continues to seek community support, not only for donations, but for help sewing, woodworking and other work to modify toys. Also, several Roanoke College alumni who worked with Toy Like Me as students are forming new chapters across the country.
Despite the hard work, Bosch says she enjoys the rewards.
“My favorite thing is to go home and know that ‘I made a grownup cry,’” she says, which is the reaction that some parents have when their child receives a Toy Like Me toy.
Bosch describes one of her favorite moments in Toy Like Me’s history so far – one of its first holiday deliveries for children at the Roanoke Valley Regional Program for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, housed at Virginia Heights Elementary School in Roanoke. Students there received toys with hearing aids and cochlear implants.
During the event, three students stood their toys on a table and moved the arms at each other. They were signing in American Sign Language.
“They see themselves,” Bosch says.
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