My favorite quote is “TIME is the best thing to SPEND on a child”

I agree with other peoples statements that there is a certain amount of parental responsibility needed but I think this problem far out strips even what a parent can do alone. This problem is cultural and needs to be addressed by not one parent but many parents taking action together.

Even if you protect your child then what? We live in a society and as we can see from the current economic crisis sometimes even the responsible people end up in trouble because of others irresponsibility.

How much good does it do to teach your children about gender stereotypes when society will still discriminate based on those stereotypes? I’m not saying we shouldn’t teach our children or that the responsibility isn’t ours but that our responsibility extends beyond our own children!

However, I did know that every.single.time. I went to the bookstore, I was allowed to get a book– but it had to be something that had literary merit. By the time I was a teen, I had read most of the “classics”. My parents weren’t perfect (whose are?), but what a great lesson for a child: that books always trump toys.

For example, I know a family (and can’t name names) whose kids have been spoiled I guess you can say. When they go into a store and they want something they throw a fit until they get it. As 2 and 3 year olds they had three playrooms full of toys. They did not accept hammy-downs, and did not give toys away because the kids wanted to keep everything that they had. Its easy to blame it on commercialism, but I think it more inlies blame with parents.

In our family, my daughter watches TV and she sees commercials. Last night in fact she spouted of an Oxyclean commercial out of nowhere! The difference is, she knows there are limits. We will go shopping at a toy store just for fun. She’ll play with some of the toys, and sometimes she will ask to buy one, but when we tell her no, she is ok… doesn’t throw a fit and understands. Part of it is exaplaining to her that you don’t get everything you want in life, and that not everything you want is good for you.

My husband’s favorite way of stating it is “YOU GET WHAT YOU GET, AND YOU DON’T THROW A FIT!”

Its our responsibility as parents to teach our kids to be frugal. Pick 1 toy not 4. Teach them about budgets.

Once a month my daughter and I spend a day cleaning out the toys in her room, and she picks out toys she doesn’t play with anymore and we take them to the Salvation Army.

Yes commercialism exists, but its our job as parents to raise our kids not the media’s!