With the holidays coming up, I've been thinking about this recently! Do you always follow age recommendations for toys?

Some of them make sense, but my 19-month old daughter definitely plays with some toys that are marked as 3+. Like, I'm specifically thinking of magnets that are too large to swallow, and my mil just freaked out on us a little bit because we bought lo a doll that said it was for 3+ (one of the American Girl doll bitty twins...there was a post about it last week that made me think of getting it for lo, and she's now obsessed!!).

If you don't always follow the age guidelines, how do you decide whether it's age-appropriate?