Daddy, I want that.....and that.

As if it isn't hard enough resisting the temptation of adult "stuff", the task of raising a child in an uber capitalist society can be daunting.

My daughter is nine.  She wants a cell phone.  If that isn't a potential financial train wreck, nothing is.

I've tried hard to shield her from the unrelenting messages that coax and prod her to nag mom and dad for more things.  Short of raising her in a doggie cage in the den with the shades pulled down, there's no way I can keep her from being influenced by advertising.  Its everywhere.

When I was young cartoons were cartoons.  A fantasy used to escape from math homework.  Now marketers blur the lines between children's shows and the products they try to hawk.  Children have wonderfully imaginative minds.  They can't help but assume that the little plastic pony in the store will be just like the one that flies, laughs and makes dreams come true on TV.  I know better...usually.  But kids don't.  That sort of advertising ranks up there with the letters my grandmother used to receive from scammers telling her that she had won a foreign lottery and all she had to do was send a processing fee of $500 to collect her $500,000.  Its criminal and it makes the job of parenting much more difficult.

I remember sitting with her, watching shows.  During every commercial break on at least 3 occasions, she'd say "I want that."  It became a family joke and I would try to beat her to the punch by saying "I want that" before she did.  "No daddy, that's not for you."

I had to patiently sit and explain to her how the pony didn't fly, the doll didn't dance and the little kitty doesn't snuggle up to you and purr like it does on TV.  (Although the miracle of technology has overcome that.)  I knew it was all just crap.  Expensive crap that would keep her occupied for about 12 minutes before it ended up in the catch-all toy bin. 

At first she didn't understand, but eventually, she did.  I'll never forget the first time I heard her say "That's junk.  It'll probably break and I know I can't do magic with it."  Boy, was I proud.  I had created a little dissenter.  We even broke her of the "I want to go to McDonalds to get a happy meal" habit.  She only wanted the toy.  Typically it was some plastic molded Shrek figurine made in China probably by a 14 year old who worked in a hot factory 20 hours a day to churn out 20 million Shreks for McDonalds that would end up entertaining American kids for 5 minutes.  After that they'd end up under car seats, between sofa cushions or chewed up by the dog.  One more useless thing to clutter up our lives.

At nine, she understands a lot of what advertising tries to do...thanks to her gavel slamming father's dissertations, but she still has a tough time overcoming the want of things. 

We have "home cleanout days" regularly and I encourage her to participate in deciding what goes to the flea market.  Its all too easy as parents to decide what our kids don't need anymore and get rid of it, but I'm very much in favor of encouraging children to make decisions about clearing out clutter.  I have been surprised at the things she's been willing to give up on her own.  Once every few months, we haul what we've cleaned out to the flea market and she gets to run the show and keep the money from anything she voluntarily brought to sell.  The fly in the ointment is that sometimes the money burns a hole in her pocket and she wants to REPLACE what she cleared out with something "better."  And so our task continues.

No sweetheart.  It's nowhere near as fun as you think it will be.