Popular toys, such as cellphones and briefcases, encourage them to mimic busy adults. Now, a new product promises to turn them into little networkers: The baby business card.
A colleague recently alerted me to this new item for babies, toddlers and preschoolers. I find these baby business cards both endearing and a little scary. The ones I’ve seen have blanks to fill in a name and contact information, so parents or children can hand them out to prospective new playdates.
Tanea Smith, the owner of She’s Got Papers in Brooklyn, N.Y., began selling the cards in 2007. The mother of two, Ms. Smith says she got the idea watching the mothers of two children playing together in a pediatrician’s waiting room scramble to exchange contact information. Lacking paper to write on, one mom handed the other her business card, Ms. Smith says. “I said to myself, ‘That little girl needs a card of her own.’” At $30 for a pack of 24, her company’s cards have pre-printed titles, from “Best Big Brother” or “Future President” to “Star of My Show” or “Chief Operating Toddler.” Other examples can be found on the Web.
You might argue that kids’ handing out cards they can’t even read amounts to pushing them too fast, and that the lofty titles overburden them with high expectations. Plus, parents are already inundated with nifty products with short shelf-lives. But adults who have bought the cards say they merely encourage reading and writing and help kids develop social skills.
Renee Collier of Brooklyn bought a 24-pack of the “She’s Got Papers” cards for her granddaughter, age 4, she says. Even though her granddaughter can’t read, Ms. Collier says, she loves passing them out. “It serves as a tool not only for networking between the children, but it brings parents together too,” she says.
Logo from She’s Got Papers