Start 'em young, I say
Life is full of disappointment. Your secret crush probably won't ask you to the prom. You will in all likelihood be passed over for a job in favour of a rich boss's nephew at some point. And if you're a 13-year-old girl living in Ontario this Christmas, chances are that Santa won't be leaving Hannah Montana tickets under your tree.
I can remember when I was 5, and Cabbage Patch Kids were the "must-have" gift of the season. Parents lined up for hours in the cold to be the first in the store to snap up the pug-faced, hard-headed little dolls. Santa didn't bring me one that year... I got a My Little Pony and Pony Stable instead, which I loved. Six months later I did get a Cabbage Patch Kid, but I still played with my My Little Pony a lot more than I ever did that doll. From what I can tell, delaying my receipt of what was supposedly the world's coolest toy EVER didn't cause me any sort of emotional damage. I wasn't ridiculed at school for not having a doll. I didn't feel that my parents didn't try hard enough to buy my love. Apparently, they had gone out looking for a doll for me, but they didn't make a big deal about it. They didn't find one, and since they hadn't promised me that Santa would bring me one because I was such a wonderful, good little girl, I was none the wiser that Christmas morning. I was happily oblivious to the whole affair the way only a 5-year-old can be.
Now, a quarter of a century later (yikes), the same story is lip synced to a slightly different tune. For parents to be struggling with the decision between going into debt and getting their children a reasonably priced, less-trendy Christmas gift is, to me, completely ridiculous. Wouldn't that $1200 be better spent going into little Madison Dakota's RESP? Or paying down your own mortgage so that you can provide added security to your family? Is that not worth more than watching two hours of poor choreography?
Yes, I do realise that it must be the hardest thing in the world to feel like you are letting down your children, but are you really letting them down when you tell them "No"?
Comments
Very VERY VERY true. It's absolutely amazing to me. Bobbin's only 2 1/2 but we're setting the stage now, because I expect in a couple of years she won't be as oblivious to the media hype as she is now (conincidentally, she saw her first ever toy commercial yesterday evening, during CBS's presentation of Rudolph, and it was for a My Little Pony and Pony stable. I kid you not! :-)) and she'll have her sights set on something for sure. But we draw the line. If we can get it with reasonable effort and MSRP then we'll do so. But e-bay bidding, coercing relatives and friends across the country to stand in lines overnight, and doing so ourselves, paying scalper prices, taking time off work - not gonna happen! And Bobbin may be a bit disappointed at some point that she didn't get what she truly wanted. It's bound to happen. But she'll also get over it pretty quickly, and by the time she's 30 she'll probably not even remember the disappointment :-)
Posted by: heather at December 5, 2007 11:03 AM