Mum Diary: Why does every toy need batteries?!

Forget cuts to child benefit, a lack of decent primary schools or the cost of travel in the school holidays – the real bane of parents’ lives is clearly batteries.

When my boys were little babies, you’d buy them a chunk of plastic shaped like a turtle and that was it, they were happy for hours. But no more, now pretty much every toy they own needs batteries; they sing, they dance, they wobble – and they infuriate me.

[Mum Diary: Of course I think my son's a genius]
[Mum Diary: Kids say the most excruciating things]

It’s bad enough that these toys make noise at all the wrong moments. A peaceful trip to tuck my toddler in before I go to bed will often turn into a cacophony of sirens and alarms as my toe stubs on his box of cars. When sleeping in his car seat, my baby Olly will flail an arm and catch the musical frog I have forgotten to turn off. He’ll be literally rudely awakened by an American accent yelling: “HEY, it’s time for FROG! Can you DANCE like a FROG? DO THE FROG DANCE!”

But even worse is that these toys devour batteries. They consume them utterly, sometimes within minutes, leaving the toy drained and useless, and your children demanding you fix them while helpfully waving plastic spanners.

Thankfully some of the toys at least just shut up once their batteries are low. Your child can continue to play with them by exercising their imagination a bit. When you think about it, it’s probably a good thing that they sometimes have to pretend the toy is talking.

However, some toys transform into terrifying monsters as soon as their batteries start to go. Their movements become jerky and haphazard, their voices slow and deepen until they sound like some sort of Satanic chant, and they repeat the same three seconds of song over and over and over, like a rave you can’t escape.

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Baby Olly has a music box in his cot and will sometimes turn it on himself when he wakes. Last night I walked past his door to hear ''Twinkle twinkle" being sung in the funeral intonation you'd normally expect from a seriously depressed gothic rock singer - my poor baby was lying in his cot rigid with terror.

Of course, it can be a good thing when toys run down. They fall out of favour and sink to the bottom of the over-stocked toy box. Every few months I sort through the toys to give them a wipe, replace the batteries and empty the box of half-eaten rice cakes. The following days are a bit like Christmas, as my children rediscover toys they had forgotten about and spend hours playing with them again.

And that can only be a good thing, as it stops them demanding new toys. My toddler has now realised that shops are not just full of things he wants; they are full of things that his parents can buy.

For example, Harry’s favourite train set helpfully comes with a large poster depicting all the other trains you can buy. I once tallied up all the models being advertised this way and realised the total value was well over £400 (that’s more than my first car!), so I’m not totally thrilled that they provide a ‘collector’s checklist’!

My eager toddler was showing me this poster and excitedly enthusing about which train, crane or rotund controller he would like next, and so I tried to explain that he couldn’t always have new toys.

“Buy me the crane, Mummy! Please buy me the crane, Mummy!”
“Well, Harry, you need money to buy things. Mummy and Daddy have to work hard to earn money, so we can’t always buy new trains.”

He thought hard about this for a while, his little forehead creased as he processed this new information. I watched, thinking that my clever child was actually understanding and would soon regulate his demands to birthdays and Christmas. But then he piped up with: “Go to work, Mummy!”

Ah well. Maybe if he’s really good, I’ll buy him some batteries.

Do most of your children’s toys take batteries? Do they drive you as mad as me? Tell me and other readers about your experiences using the comments below.