Product Review: Mr. Potato Head, The Best Toy an Autistic Child Could Ask For

Playskool's Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head are still the same familiar toys I had in the 1970s but their wardrobes have multiplied. No longer content with just a mustache as an accessory, the play sets available now include Star Wars costumes, princess clothes, Santa Spud, king clothes and Halloween and Easter potato heads, to name a few. Kids of all ages can still enjoy putting a face on a goofy plastic potato while mixing the various outfits. We have five for my child, and they have more clothes and accessories than I do! For autistic children like my three year old son David, however, Mr. Potato Head is more than a toy; he is also a teaching tool.

When we first learned David had autism at eighteen months, he had started speaking and then stopped. Around age two he began counting because he had learned the numbers from watching Sesame Street; however, the counting aloud was merely a form of echolalia, an aspect of autism during which the child repeats words he has heard but with no meaning behind them. Sadly I wondered if he would ever speak to tell us what he wanted.

Then a new speech therapist brought Mr. Potato Head into our lives. Of course I felt nostalgia from my childhood for these great toys, but now I had a new reason to love them. After a few weeks of hard work from the therapist, David learned to ask for the eyes, nose and mouth of the potato head from her so he could put the toys together. He enjoyed them so much we bought him his own Mr. Potato Heads and he still plays with them all the time a year later. Not only did he learn to respond to the praise he got for naming the parts of Potato Head's face, he drummed up more praise for himself by pointing out the eyes, nose and mouth, as well as ears, hat, hair and shoes of human family members and visitors. At this point he can ask for many things he wants with simple sentences, but I will never forget it began with asking for parts to build Mr. Potato Head.

One reason children with autism often do not speak is because the disorder causes them to avoid looking people in the face. Because they aren't watching their caregivers speak, they don't learn to speak easily by mimicking facial movements like their neurotypical counterparts. At the time of the initial diagnosis, we asked the neurological pediatrician why David didn't play with stuffed animals. The doctor explained that David was uncomfortable with toys with faces just as he was uncomfortable looking at people's faces. Although David at three does not always look people in the eye, through being strongly encouraged to look at the Potato Heads' faces, he looks at people far more often than he used to.

Another troubling feature of autism is that children with the disorder do not put toys to their untended use. For example, instead of pretending to drive a toy car, David would simply line his cars up. He would spend all day lining, stacking and arranging his toys and other objects around the house which interested him. Mr. Potato Head was the first toy he actually played with in the way in which the manufacturer intended.

Eighteen months after we learned the cause of David's strange behaviors, he is not the same child who would hide from everyone other than his immediate caregivers. He will now take family and visitor alike and lead them by the hand to toys, most often his Mr. Potato Head, and ask them to sit. Sure, he may ask them to sit by screaming, "chair!" but soon he will be playing with his friend, handing them the eyes, nose and mouth and taking turns building a thing with bunny ears, a bowler hat, a purse, thick eyebrows, a mustache and ladies' shoes. He has found one more way to relate to others and the world which sometimes overwhelms him, and I thank Playskool for that.