BlogHer - Black Friday - Comments

It started earlier in my house!

phdinparenting — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 08:08:44 -0600

Thanks for your comment. That is a really great point. I see it already in our 20 month old daughter who wants everything that her older brother has. It is so extreme that I hardly know what to buy her for Christmas and birthdays because I don't want to buy duplicates of things we already have (she can just play with her brothers' stuff, he is good about sharing) and she doesn't want things that we buy for her that are not his!

PhD in Parenting - http://phdinparenting.wordpress.com

A Healthy Dose of Sarcasm

BookLady Alison — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 23:44:33 -0600

That's how I solved the problem with the effects of advertising when my kids were little. I just told them, "Hey! It's the job of a business to sell stuff. They tell you about the stuff on adverts, which makes you want it." Result: "No-one will tell me what I want!" said my kids.

As said kids got older we began to examine in more detail how adverts are constructed. Look at adverts for products that are aimed at 6 year olds and you'll notice that the advert shows an 8 year old playing with the toy. As soon as I pointed this out to my kids they would laugh and say that no 8 year old would really play with the item in question. I realized this after I went to a class on authoring children's books. Children want to read books about children who are a couple of years older than them. Children want to learn from older kids. Is it the object in the advert your child wants, or is it to be like the older child they see there on the screen? Ask them that question. If they say they want to be like the child you could always suggest that you ask a child you know who is a couple of years older what their favorite thing to play with at that age was, what toy or item they have used over and over. I do however suspect that wanting to be like the older child only starts around age 6.

Then as kids get older you can introduce them to logical fallacies, like Bandwagon and Snob Appeal. Heck, by the time you do all this you might as well homeschool them and keep them away from all the peer stuff in the first place :-)

BookLady Alison

Homeschooler's Guide to the Galaxy - conversation for parents who believe in learning.
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The Shopping Challenge

Susan Wagner — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 20:24:30 -0600

Dana, we could probably turn that into a reality TV show.

Friday Style | The Working Closet | Friday Playdate

Before I had kids, I used to

Dana J. Tuszke — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 22:45:22 -0600

Before I had kids, I used to go shopping the day after Christmas with my mother. We thought we were getting the best deals of all time. Turns out the better deals came out a few days before Christmas and I've resorted to doing my shopping then. Usually at 9 p.m. while my son is in bed. I'm probably creating more stress for myself, but it's actually quite fun. Like a challenge of sorts. ;)

Dana from The Dana Files.