What we publish, and what we refuse to.

Who writes and who reviews

Denis Šol writes and reviews the guides, and every guide carries that byline with the date it was last checked. Product lists are assembled automatically against the thresholds published in how we choose gifts, then reviewed before release; safety and research copy is checked line by line against the primary sources it cites.

No clinical or child-development credential is claimed anywhere on this site. Our contribution is careful sourcing and plain language, not expertise we do not have.

Which sources qualify

Sources are ranked, and the ranking decides which wins when two disagree.

1. 1Federal regulation and regulator guidance. CPSC rules, recall notices and published advice. Where a regulator states an instruction, we state it in the regulator's terms rather than softening it into a preference.
2. 2Peer-reviewed research. Cited with its sample size and its limits. A study of 26 toddlers is reported as a study of 26 toddlers, never as what toddlers do.
3. 3Clinical and education standards. Professional bodies and published developmental milestones, used to explain what a stage looks like — not to diagnose an individual child.
4. 4Retailer and manufacturer data. Prices, ratings, review counts and stated age grading. Treated as facts about a listing, never as evidence that a product is safe or good.

Every guide lists its sources in full, with publisher, type and the date we accessed them. A claim with no source does not go in.

What we will not publish

• We do not certify that a toy is safe. Every home check we publish is a one-way screen: it can tell you to stop, never that you may proceed.
• We do not give medical advice. Where a question is medical — a suspected swallowing, an injury, a developmental concern — we say to seek care and stop there.
• We do not publish a page to capture a search phrase. A page exists when it answers a question the existing pages do not.
• We do not invent evidence. No study, statistic, source or search-volume figure appears unless it was checked and recorded.
• We do not accept payment, product or placement for a position in any list, and we do not run sponsored posts.

Corrections

We correct errors rather than quietly deleting them. A factual correction to a safety claim is made as soon as it is confirmed, and the guide’s review date moves to the day of the change. Where advice from a regulator changes, the guide is updated to the current instruction and the superseded assumption is shown beside it, so a reader who acted on the old version can see what moved.

Contact routes for corrections are listed under operator information.

Independence

ToyByAge earns affiliate commission when a reader buys through an eligible Amazon link. That relationship is disclosed on every page that carries such a link. It does not influence which products qualify, because the thresholds are applied before any commercial consideration and are published so the result can be checked. No brand has ever been offered, or given, a position in a list.