University Children’s Hospital patients received toys last Thursday during an event with Roanoke College’s “Toy Like Me” organization, a club that modifies toys to reflect children’s medical conditions.
Toy Like Me was originally founded in the U.K. in 2015 as a nonprofit community interest group. Founder Rebecca Atkinson noticed a lack of representation of disability in the toy industry. She wanted to stop the exclusion she had felt growing up with hearing aids and never seeing a toy that looked like her. Therefore, Toy Like Me was founded to modify existing toys to represent different medical conditions and disabilities.
Roanoke College biology lecturer Frances Bosch founded a Toy Like Me program at Roanoke after reading an article about the U.K. organization in 2015. At the time she was also conducting research for her course called “Differ-ability or Disability: Experiences of Individuals with Disabilities.”
“In May 2016, my class modified approximately 30 toys for Carilion Clinic Children’s Hospital in Roanoke,” Bosch said. “With Rebecca [Atkinson’s] blessing, we gave the toys away in the name of Toy Like Me.”
After organizing a Santa Claus Toy Drive with sororities and honor societies in September 2016, Bosch said Toy Like Me at Roanoke College was born.
“We followed with an ‘Acts of Love: Toy Like Me Valentines’ campaign and a ‘Spring Basket’ campaign before my May class modified toys for U.Va.,” Bosch said. “During the school year, we have modified toys for children nominated by friends and family, as well as class sets for three Roanoke Valley schools and the Montgomery County program for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.”
Though the Roanoke College-based organization is only one year old, it has already sent nearly 400 toys across the country and continues to receive nominations for more toys. Bosch said she foresees continued growth for the entirely donation-dependent organization.
The event with the University Children’s Hospital came to be through the coordination of Bosch and her college friend Karra Lee, a physician assistant in the adult cancer center at the University Hospital. The two had kept in touch and decided to make this event happen.
Assistant Professor of Pediatric Oncology Dr. Daniel “Trey” Lee, Karra Lee’s husband, said the event first focused on oncology patients to see if the program would be feasible in the University’s Health System.
“[Bosch and Karra Lee] had been working with the Roanoke hospitals for some time, and it’s grown bigger than what they could use locally,” Lee said. “They decided to reach out, and it was just perfect that Karra worked at U.Va. and that I was her husband and worked at the Children’s Hospital. So we just kind of got all parties together one day by email and the Children’s Hospital was incredibly supportive of it.”
The University Children’s Hospital received 76 toys with modifications from Toy Like Me at Roanoke College. Since many of the toys were delivered to oncology patients, some of the toys included hairless dolls and stuffed dogs with PICC lines, which are the tubes that deliver chemotherapy. Together the donated toys are worth about $705.
Though Toy Like Me at Roanoke College has many goals, one focus is to create a community of inclusion for children and families with differences — people who might otherwise struggle to feel included in society.
Roanoke sophomore Natalie Slemp was at the University event and said the reactions from the children make these events special.
“Toys normally depict a ‘normal’ and ’beautiful’ person, not a person who has a disability, and I believe that children should grow up seeing toys with disabilities,” Slemp said. “When they see an actual person who has a similar disability, they will not look at them as disabled, but just as another person.”
Shari Kingery, the mother of a child who previously received a toy, said the toy modifications are helping those with disabilities to be accepted and understood in the daily world. Her daughter, Sara, is deaf and has cochlear implants to help her hear, but her speech is often not well understood.
“When we would go to the playground, little girls would come up to Sara and ask her to play,” Kingery said. “She could hear the question, but when she went to communicate back that she wanted to play, they could not understand her and [would] run away.”
Sara received a Princess Belle Barbie from Toy Like Me at Roanoke College, which had the same hair and eye color as her. The doll was modified to have yellow cochlear implants.
“When Sara got the doll with implants, she would take it to the park along with other Barbies and was able to show the doll had implants just like hers,” Kingery said. “This way she could explain that the implants helped her hear, but she was still deaf. The girls would then understand that she did want to play and they would sit and play with her Barbies.”
Kingery said there have been noticeable differences in Sara’s social interactions with her peers, and credits Bosch and the students involved with Toy Like Me at Roanoke College for this change.
“I want to encourage the community to see these kids for what they can do, not their limitations,” Kingery said.
Bosch said the success of the University Children’s Hospital event is reflected in how excited the children were to see toys that looked like themselves and in the parents’ gratitude that their children were being included.
“We hope to make the donation to U.Va an annual thing, until we can train a group of U.Va students to found their own chapter of Toy Like Me at U.Va.,” Bosch said.
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