April 1, 2008
Instilling the Wrong Values in Our Kids
The parent trap, by Katharine Mieszkowski
I agree with everything that Pamela Paul says. Some key bits:
“The less the toy does, the better. Everyone thinks: ‘Toys need to be interactive.’ No, toys don’t need to be interactive. Children need to interact with toys. The best toys are 90 percent kid, 10 percent toy … Doing the things that our supposedly neglectful parents did, like toting us around town, from the dry cleaner to the grocery store, that’s all incredibly informative and worthwhile for kids. It’s better to do that with your kid than plant them on the floor with a Fisher-Price learning table that has 25 noise-making buttons, while you’re checking your e-mail.
All kids need are adults holding them and singing to them and talking to them and reading to them. That’s enough. It’s not like the more you stimulate your child, the more you can sort of propel them to greater heights.
Parents have more demands on their time, particularly work-wise. There was a Census report that came out last month that said that 40 years ago 17 percent of moms went back to work within a year of having a child, and today it’s 64 percent.
What is Baby Einstein really, but a modern playpen? It’s a way to have your kid occupied, while you get to go do something else. Baby Einstein is one of the most successful marketing bamboozlings of the American parenting marketplace. If Baby Einstein had been called ‘Couch Potato Kiddie,’ and the marketing had been ‘Get your child started on the joys of watching television as early as possible,’ that would have been honest marketing, and that really is what parents are buying.
Parents are definitely more susceptible [now to this sort of exploitative marketing]. We’re more time strapped. Both parents are often working. They’re often working more than one job. Their hours are longer. When they’re home, they’re not entirely home, because they’re on e-mail, they’re on the phone, they’re on the Internet. There are so many distractions.
What that means is that we want anything that is going to make our lives easier, and it also means that we feel incredibly guilty about any moment that we’re not paying attention to our kids, or when we’re not there. What the parenting industry has done is created products and services to allegedly take care of those fears and needs.
If a parent is working around the clock to make money in order to be able to afford Giorgio Armani Bambino clothes, what kind of values are we instilling in them? At the most basic level reuse, recycle, repurpose. Question before you make any purchase whether what you’re doing is to assuage your angst, guilt and fear, and if it’s actually going to make a material difference for your child.”
Toddler T’s mother and I have had many battles about these issues. For example, she bought something called a Leapfrog? electronic book kind of thing, cost $100 or so, against my wishes. She’s a total sucker for crap like that, especially stuff that will supposedly give him “an edge,” and it strains our marriage for sure.
– via kottke.org –
April 1st, 2008 at 11:41 am
Just do what our parents did and give him a sharp toy painted with lead and a mercury filled thermometer.
April 1st, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Cap: I’m pretty sure his China-bought toys are 100%-lead-paint anyway. :) (You’re older than me, I think, so you had it even “worse.”)
April 1st, 2008 at 6:29 pm
CapGains comment reminded me of that Monty Python sketch.
Agree with simplicity is best. Got little Nich to figure how to connect the Lego train together to push along the floor. Just got to teach him to stop derailing it in a calm fury of throwing.
DJF
April 1st, 2008 at 8:21 pm
I’m the same way. Kids need blocks, sticks, capes, whatever to play with and do it outside. They need to go on treasure hunts, explore, catch lady bugs, and whatever else. It does more for their little brains than Baby Einstein IMHO.
April 1st, 2008 at 9:03 pm
@Declan: Thanks for the link. I think I’ve seen a variation of that skit before. (Boy did Google get a steal when they bought YouTube for only $1.6 billion… I’m serious.)
April 1st, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Agree with you, to a certain degree. TV is bad, so I tried to have them watch as little as possible. And we don’t watch TV, so they learn from the parents. Lily is an avid reader for her age, enjoying Charlotte’s Web last year, and starting Alice’s Wonderland.
Though I have to say, Leapfrog is one of the better electronic toys. Of course, K’nex, Lego and Blocks are better.
Periodically I ask Lily to rank all the activities I signed her up(she loves every sigle one of them– clay, mixed media, karate, skating, drawing, singing, drama… )along with “speding time with family — camping, picnic, travel, etc. She alsways put “family time” at the top. Kids need to have fun first, then the rest comes natually.
April 1st, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Oh, Wes still carries arond a blanket when he is tired or unhappy. He resembles Linus in everyway, including his interfering grandmother. Ming thinks this is because I am such of fan of Peanuts.
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:08 am
Quite right. I’m overweight lead based on my Chinese toy manufacturers position.
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:27 am
Cap: I’m overweight based on my Chinese food position.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:34 am
The best thing that happened to our kids was that we were too cheap to pay for cable tv. So there was little tv-watching when the kids were very young. We read tons of books to them, spent lots of time pushing trains around a track, played lots of games with them, etc.
They’re older now, but even so - there’s an XBox360 in the basement (with Rock Band) - I don’t think they’ve touched the Xbox in over two months. They still seem to prefer Monopoly, Risk, and Scrabble over the XBox (my wife never believed that I got the XBox for the kids).
Little House on the Prairie is a great series to read to the kids. Or maybe not … life was tough back then.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:46 am
Greg: Thanks for the comment. Yes, I’m pretty dead set against the TV … I never watch it at home and probably set a good example there. Of course I stare at another screen instead, the Internet, where I definitely *don’t* set a good example. I never ever play video games (console or PC).
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Amen.