Parenting In The Real World: Taming the Greedies Part 1

Tis the season to be greedy…. fa-la-la-la, la-la-la. A common parental lament even among preschool parents is how demanding their children become at the end of the year. With two major faiths having gift giving traditions in December children are quickly trained to expect a mother load of goodies at year’s end. If our kids don’t have long enough lists or extravantent enough gift dreams, television and retail marketing step in to encourage higher and high expectations. We are way beyond visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads. To complicate matters, competitive grandparenting is raised to the level of an Olympic contest, the prize not a gold medal and millions in revenue but the golden glow of a 4 year old’s affection and delight.

Christmas time brings to the fore a challege faced by all discerning parents: how to raise content children in a materialistic society. Parents who do not celebrate Christmas have to face the overwhelming barrage of Christmas hype. Parents who celebrate Christmas endure the hype, plus their children’s and extended families’ expectations of what the perfect Christmas should be. Perfect usually includes lots and lots of stuff, preferably gifted wrapped. What is a parent to do?

In terms of child training, Christmas is just an extended time of contentment training. Kids learn to be happy and content with what they have when they aren’t expecting more and more. That means setting limits and saying no often. The best time to figure out the principles that guide parental decisions about buying stuff for the kids or the amount of stuff they may receive from others is before the Christmas season. Having those principles in place frees parents to respond to the seasonal sales and gift hype based on how best to teach children to be content, rather than impulse or guilt. A peaceful holiday season with happy kids Christmas morning is a beautiful thing.

Comments

[Anne]

We are lucky. Our kids put together a list for Santa, but understand that Santa is not always able to get everything on the list. In addition, they really don't ask for much. One thing that I think contributes to that is that they do not watch commercials (we have Tivo and both learned from a young age to fast forward past the commercials). They don't have the TV telling them what they must have each season so they need to use their imaginations and come up with things that they really want and will use.