How can you miss the fact that she looks way down on people that wear designer clothes (I find this even more amusing coming from someone that shops at the Gap)? The dripping disapproval of parents that feed their kids fast food, pizza and soda? Its the exact same “I am so much better than you” attitude that the article was written with.
Hm. I didn’t get that at all. What I got was that even sven doesn’t believe that one must accept the values that commercials push.
I don’t look down on people who wear designer clothes. But I don’t think they are a good choice for my life (My Gap jeans- the first pair of pants that have ever fit me in my whole life- excepted) and damned if I’m going to pay $80 for a tee-shirt because some middle schooler somewhere decided thats what middle schoolers will wear.
Furthermore, pizza, fast food and soda are some of my favorite things and I’m sure my kids will have plenty. But I want them to understand these foods are “special” foods, not everyday foods. I have a little four year old cousin that will cry if you offer him a glass of water, because his whole life he’s been given juice or soda with every meal. Water is good, healthy and comes out of the walls. I want my kid to learn that as the default drink.
I despise the idea that there is certain food that “kids” eat and it has to be purple, dinosaur shaped, or comes in a box with cartoon characters on it. I hate how every kid “knows” from nearly birth that McDonald’s is the appropriate place for kids. How McDonalds becomes the very concept of food for kids. I remember as a child feeling vaguely cheated each time we passed McDonalds for someplace else, even though I didn’t really like their food. This idea was made up by some very skilled and well-paid ad executives and I resent the idea that it’s going to cause endless “But whhhhy can’t we go to Mcccccddooooonnnnallldssss” fight in my household.
My little cousin- who I love dearly- has a list of three or four items he will eat. And I know this is aggravated by child-rearing practices. I remember when he was just a baby I was visiting and wanted to go out to an Indian restaurant. My mom got all worried and was like “well, we can’t because we have the kid here. Let’s go to a coffee shop”. I said “Mom, there are millions of kids in India and they all eat something”. We fed the kid fish pakoras and told him the papadums were chips and he was happy as a clam. But I know he was internalizing the idea that “kids only eat certain foods” message. It works for their household, but it certainly won’t work in mine.
I eat a wide variety of foods from around the world, and while I understand kids are picky eaters by nature, I’m not going to suddenly start subsisting off Denny’s fare because I have a kid. Kids all over the world eat and through history kids were able to grow into adults without purple ketchup.
Poor, poor, poor Hallboy. Since his birthday rolls around during the school year, we usually do something at school so his whole class can celebrate. (Ya’ know, so that one, lone kid who can’t afford to come to a birthday party toting the expected gift isn’t left out?) Last year, we did an Ice-Cream Sundae party at school. No gifts. Yes, family members got him presents (to open at home), but there wasn’t any of the Come Bearing Gift practice.
What’s wrong with toys? Yes, books are very nice. I own many myself, some without pictures, even. But toys are not bad for kids at all. Many toys are educational, many stimulate creativity and imagination. Yes, 25 is probably too much, but this woman’s attitude that books = good, toys = bad, is baffling.
You’re begging the question again, because 'excessive TV" is completely relative, and what constitutes ‘bad’?
Candy is an easy one, but declaring gobs and gobs of toys as ‘bad’ is merely an opinion. We can exchange all the anectdotal evidence we want, but in the end, we’ll have examples of people who were raised with nothing and turned out good, and others who were raised with nothing who turned out to be nothing.
Same goes for people who had everything as a kid. I know people who lived below their means to teach their kids a sense of value and honor, yet the kids turned out like whack jobs…while others in the same situation turned out great…well adjusted, etc.
There is nothing wrong with trying to limit what your kid has (does he need a 1700 dollar collection of beanie babies?), but if you are doing it for a cause, to make a point, and you alienate yourself and your kids via your unique/questionable actions, then you have rolled the dice with your decisions/sacrifice. The correlation is weak, yet you might have too much faith in it.
It’s a nice plan, but are the kids really old enough to appreciate a finely aged Scotch?
Some tastes in food are definitely acquired (bitter tastes, for example), and kids really might not like them. A lot of little kids don’t have much of a tolerance for spicy food, either, and I’m living proof that this doesn’t mean that they will grow up to not like spicy food. I agree that kids’ food doesn’t have to be purple or dinosaur-shaped, but there are certain flavors and textures (I’m way picky about food texture, always have been) that kids just don’t generally enjoy. And if you turn eating into a power struggle, it just gives the kid more negative associations with that type of food, and makes them less likely to be able to develop a taste for it later on.
I’m afraid that the woman in the article might be getting into a power struggle with her kid about books versus toys. That doesn’t bode well for his enjoyment of reading later on, and that’s a shame.
Which is why, you will note, that I never said gobs of toys are bad for kids. I said they were bad for the parents. I will agree that one would be hard pressed to find research documenting that a child who is given everything he wants while growing up turns out “bad” in some way.
Begging the Question is a fallacy in a logical argument in which the premises include the claim that the conclusion is true. Hence, I am not begging the question as I made no logical argument, I simply made a claim that you feel is too vague. I claim excessive TV is bad and you say “What is excessive and what is bad?” I will now rectify the vagueness:
Excessive is 16 hours a day and bad is that it cuts into time that could be better used for education, social interaction, or exercise. Surely you are not going to argue that watching TV every waking minute is a benign thing? As to the border between every waking minute and none, obviously reasonable people can reasonably disagree but I try to limit my kid’s TV to an average of 60 minutes/day.
Maybe I overestimate the average 6 year old, but I have known some great little kids that while they don’t always have all the knowledge and understanding to develop complex responses to local need, they do understand that there are others and that others have needs too. Kohl’s Kids Who Care lists ages and a very brief description of what the kids did. Are some of them minor band-aids for big problems? Yeah, but you gotta start somewhere. Further reading
even sven, I agree with your post in its entirety. I am seeing what you’re describing in my nieces, too.
Ah, yes, the “Things will be different when I have kids!” argument. It’s so, so easy when they’re the theoretical kind of children, simultaneously raised with a theoretical other parents. I think you’ll find the ones made of flesh abd blood are a little trickier.
Until you DO have kids, your theories mean squat.
Of course she’ll find her actual children different than her hypothetical ones; then she will take her good intentions and figure out a way to make them work in the real world, compromises and all. Her theories on how she wants to raise her own children are as valid as anyone else’s. I don’t see anything wrong with having good intentions for raising children.
In actual reality, I don’t intend to have kids, so it’s Calvin Klein and McDonalds can relax.