In the first years of a young child's life, physical and cognitive growth occurs at a rapid rate. Sensory stimulation provides an ideal learning path with additional benefits of hand eye coordination, motor skills and physical enjoyment. Inadequate stimulus slows development and may cause irritability and dissatisfaction.
It is a fact of life in the 21st century to have two income households. With so many mothers in today's workforce, many children are bottle fed by parents and caregivers at day care centers. Children become accustomed to the shape of feeding bottles and retain a memory of enjoyment because of the sucking and hunger satisfaction. Most young children become accustomed to manipulating the feeding bottle themselves.
It has also been a fact of life since the dawn of mankind that young children have a need to chew on objects to lessen the discomfort of cutting teeth through their gums. The process is commonly referred to as “teething” and the objects used to chew on include fingers and anything else that is within reach. Human nature provides the young with a natural curiosity to grasp, look at, chew on and then discard objects, because they have lost interest in them. Then the process begins again. Many objects brought to the mouth for oral gratification could potentially harm the child because of sharp edges, swallowing potential or material content. Caregivers have sought safe and effective ways to provide a chewing surface with the advent of the teething toy.
Teething toys are generally configured of a soft material that a young child can chew on. However, because of generic shapes, lack of visual stimulation and lack of real satisfaction, interest in the toy is easily lost. There is not adequate sensory stimulation built into current teething toys to retain the interest of most young children or a memory response for retention of the toy. This results in throwing of the toy with eventual dissatisfaction of the child. An example of a representative teething toy is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,766,223 issued to Johnson.
Prior art teething toys are inherently boring to a child. They do provide a chewing surface but lack an inherent interest, satisfaction or memory response. Heretofore, no toy has been developed that can orally satisfy the child, provide sensory stimulation and retain the child's interest for toy retention.
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide a chewable teething toy
It is another object of the invention to provide a teething toy with visual sensory stimulation
It is further object of the invention to provide a teething toy that is familiar in size, shape and weight to a feeding bottle
It is an object of the invention to provide a teething toy that is easy to chew on, suck on and manipulate near the mouth
It is another object of the invention to provide a teething toy that stimulates a memory response to hunger suppression and oral stimulation
It is a further object of the invention to provide a teething toy that remains interesting and orally gratifying to the child for toy retention