Comments on: Review: Buy, Buy Baby

By: Julia

Julia — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 18:46:14 +0000

I’ve found with my neices and nephews that the trick to countering outside influences you don’t like is to be a greater influence. If you want your kids to read, read with them. If you’re there you can read anything you want because they’ll be there to be with you. Let them watch tv, but watch with them. Again, they’ll be there to be with you.
My sister told me about watching Ghost Busters and Babylon 5 with her two-year-old. My brother-in-law watches old westerns with her. She loves the time she spends with her parents so much and she doesn’t complain or argue at all when they pop in a Star Wars DVD instead of Tangled or Tinkerbell (and she loves all the Disney characters too).
If you ignore them, they look for attention elsewhere. And characters like Elmo and Dora seem to talk to their audience, providing that attention that kids want.

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 23:51:13 +0000

Do you have any recommendations for books on discipline?

By: Rockledge

Rockledge — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 22:46:57 +0000

By the way, a great way to help immunize your children from commercials is to discuss with them how the advertisers try to manipulate you and to use specific examples. We made a game of it and my kids had great fun selecting some commercials and making jokes about the methods being used.

By: littlepitcher

littlepitcher — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 18:51:55 +0000

I have no child-rearing experience, but can share an acquaintance’s practice of keeping closed captioning on at all times, so his children could learn to read from public TV and other sources. If you leave CC on and mute the commercials (a necessity for that economically marginal family) it helps defeat the sales pitches.
His oldest has full scholarships, so obviously it works.

By: joan

joan — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 14:25:28 +0000

A relative of mine has a TV in her baby’s room, it is on the baby channel ALL The Time day and night. A few days ago I saw the child for the first time since Easter. The TV was acquared a few days before Easter. The child is 10 months old. Before the TV, the girl had lots of personality, now she is just lackluster. The mother has a great professional job which includes making TV appearances at times, so she is not about to listen to anyone else about how to raise her daughter.

By: amanda

amanda — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 11:31:51 +0000

Peer pressure from other parents can be really powerful and quite upsetting. I raised my children, who are adults now, with few purchased toys. I bought sturdy essentials, like good wooden blocks and Legos. I splurged on lots of quality books and music. The kids and I made alot of other toys. For instance, because we did not buy video games, the boys found a way to draw them out on paper, drawing cartoons to respond to the previous players move. I was pretty routinely told by friends, family, and other homeschooling parents that the kids were “deprived” and would not do well in later life because they didn’t have the “advantages” of educational toys and mainatream consumer goods. My kids, who now earn professional salaries, are still frugal and creative about saving money while they build interesting lives. Many of their more privileged friends, on the other hand, grew up to be constant consumers.

By: Louise

Louise — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 09:25:03 +0000

Thank you so much for this wonderful article. I’m going to bookmark it to explain to family why I hate branded children’s products and television shows so much. They seem to think I am somehow depriving my nearly 2 year old of important childhood experiences but you’ve given me renewed confidence that what I am doing is right.

By: Venkat

Venkat — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 01:32:25 +0000

Recently, I visited one of my friend and his kid was playing with a fancy toy that taught how to write and read. I started observing the kid immersed in playing with the toy, the kid then switched to Ipad and started playing Math Bingo, he quickly found himself in a situation, where he did not have a prompt to recognise the numbers and started losing interest in the Math Bingo. Had his parents sat with him and practised the numbers rather than handing over a E-tutor, he would have had fun in learning/Playing.

By: kristine

kristine — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 00:29:56 +0000

PS- who lets their kids watch I-Carly? I babysit, and a small child I watched LOVED the show. I was appalled by the rudeness, meanness, snideness, and overall poor values of the characters. I was amazed. Rudeness as humor is the trend on TV these days.

Nickelodeon is nothing but a big fat commercial, and any quality programing is there purely as a vehicle for ads. But they get parents to auto-OK the station as a “viewing safehouse”, so many do not review the individual programs, some of which are not even benign garbage- they are actually bad. But they sell ads.

By: kristine

kristine — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 00:22:32 +0000

I did not have TV for my kids till they were 10. We watched old TV shows, and children’s shows like Little Bear, but sans commercials. Most of their books were non-fiction DK books, or classic fiction. I think my kids were 7 or 8 before they realized most of their friends did not get their viewing from the library.

Interestingly, at their dad’s house, they watched a lot of TV. Come the holidays. they asked him for a lot of marketed crap, and asked us for very little, and usually stuff that was in line with family activities- more books, art supplies, a telescope, etc. But we did get our son a Buz Lightyear…we caved.

It was an inadvertent social experiment. The direct connection between the gimmes and TV could not have been more apparent.

In direct contrast to the McD mentioned…my daughter was raised on, and loved, the British series “The Avengers”. When she finally saw current sitcoms, she asked me (at age 10), Mommy, why are all the women now acting so stupid? My girl’s role model and aspiration was Emma Peel- a black belt and rocket scientist in MI-6, who wore Pierre Cardin. Flash forward 13 years… my girl has a black belt, (and excelled at several sports), and is going to MIT for bio-engineering. And she dresses with great personal style and flair! We just made the mental connection the other day. Wild stuff!

By: chuck

chuck — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 22:18:12 +0000

when i was a kid i watched a lot of tv. i think every other add was for mcdonalds and i ate a lot of mcdonalds when i was a kid. coincidence? i think not. things that are advertised a lot are consumed a lot. the trick is to get people to consume lots of something that costs very little like soda or cheap plastic trinkits. that way u can spend all your $$ on marketing and still make a lot of $$. kids are great targets for this since they haven’t honed perceived value of things yet.

By: Steven

Steven — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 22:10:20 +0000

This books sounds pretty interesting. I might have to check it out even though I don’t have any children.

By: Rockledge

Rockledge — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 21:32:30 +0000

I remember the sadness I felt the first time my eldest asked for brand-name toy. It seemed like such a loss of innocence.

As for TV, we got rid of cable and reception when my kids were young and use DVDs instead. We can control the content and completely eliminate the relentless advertisements. There were some complaints at first, but they had been fighting over the TV anyway so it was still an improvement. It was such a relief to not have that noxious stream of commercialism coming into the house, we’ve never looked back.

I grew up without TV, so it was an easy decision for me, however, I know of a few parents in my neighborhood who have done the same thing for the same reason and are happy with the decision. We also talk to our kids about commercials and their effects. Both of my kids are frugal and not impressed by commercialism, so it seems like it worked.