A question for all GD parents...

[IdentityCrisisMama]

How do you all deal with marketing to children?





For me, this is one area that I struggle with quite a bit. The "non-negotiable" thread got me thinking that buying stuff in the check out line is a non-negotiable for me and the many things concerning marketing/consumerism that I assert control over my child with.

I just don't feel that we're playing on a level field, yk? I much prefer to let DC choose her own snacks and toys, books, entertainment and etc. but I don't like the idea of her being manipulated. I also feel a rather strong personal responsibility to be a conscious consumer.

So, my question is basically about the issue of consumerism and how it relates to the consensual/authoritative debate as well as a request for a general discussion about marketing and how we all deal with it within our families.

[maya44]

How do you all deal with marketing to children?





For me, this is one area that I struggle with quite a bit. The "non-negotiable" thread got me thinking that buying stuff in the check out line is a non-negotiable for me and the many things concerning marketing/consumerism that I assert control over my child with.

I just don't feel that we're playing on a level field, yk? I much prefer to let DC choose her own snacks and toys, books, entertainment and etc. but I don't like the idea of her being manipulated. I also feel a rather strong personal responsibility to be a conscious consumer.

So, my question is basically about the issue of consumerism and how it relates to the consensual/authoritative debate as well as a request for a general discussion about marketing and how we all deal with it within our families.


This is intersting. As you know, I fall more on the authoritative side of parenting and I just never have an issue with this.

I have never told my dd's explicitly that I won't always buy them stuff but they seem to on some level understand it. They have never, ever even asked for me to buy them some stuff in a check out lane, though they will look at the stuff.

I have told them to feel free to tell me about anything they want and I will consider it. I try to get them things that they want within reason and on some level they seem to not to want to abuse my "generosity" by asking for too much. I am myself suprised at how seldom they ask for things. I can say that I have no worldly idea how I gave them this message.

I do love getting them things. I think that i have mentioned before that as a child I had this little fantasy that I would open a drawer to get dressed in the morning and there would just be a gift in there. And so maybe 4 times a year, I stick something in my dd's underwear drawer and it is just a total suprise in the morning.

I do a lot of culling to keep the amount of stuff we have in the house at any one time. We give tons of stuff away and my dd's have never objected to this.

They will occassionally ask for some piece of junk they see on TV and I try to explain that it is not as exciting as it looks. If they really keep asking for it, I will often buy it for a b-day or holiday gift. But more often than not one of their friends gets it and they realize its kind of a junky thing.

They did keep asking for "FLOAM" some crazy product they saw on TV. But they said that they used it a friends house and it was really fun. I did get it for my dd for her b-day and they have done some cute little art projects with it.

I also talk to them about advertising and the purspose of it and how they need to really make informed decsions.

So I don't know if is this of any help. I am sure it is harder if you are living more consensually .

[~member~]

I just don't feel that we're playing on a level field, yk? I much prefer to let DC choose her own snacks and toys, books, entertainment and etc. but I don't like the idea of her being manipulated. I also feel a rather strong personal responsibility to be a conscious consumer.
I raise them to think on their own and not be manipulated. We don't watch TV. I never buy anything that is not necessary.
Going on 2 yrs and it has been awesome!

[boongirl]

Op - do you mean how does one not buy all the crap that is unloaded on kids visually nowadays? Like all the product tie ins? Like all the toys and food that match the characters from the movie or tv show?

Well, I only have one little girl, almost three, and she already loves Elmo, Nemo, Thomas the tank engine, and the Wiggles. We do not have the cable channels for kids, only local pbs. The only tv she watches is sesame street and sometimes tellatubbies or boobah. But, she does have some dvds and loves to watch them. I threw out my concerns about tv when she stopped taking naps and I realized we both needed some down time each day. I realize that one very good way of avoiding a lot of this stuff is to just turn off the tv but we like it and I don't want to.

But, what to do when she asks for all the product tie ins? Well, I would say no most of the time and tell her why. It is not healthy, it is expensive, we don't have room for it, it takes batteries and we don't have money to buy batteries all the time and they are bad for the environment. I think of the product tie ins as junk food. (some of it is junk food) It is ok to have it maybe once or twice a year but for the most part it is a waste of money, health, resources, and time. I think kids need to learn these lessons. It is a part of our morals and our values. Kids need to know why we don't buy tons of stuff. We do buy some of it, thought, and I have noticed that it just makes her want more. Like Thomas the tank engine series engines. She knows them all by name and wants the ones she does not already have. It seems that she never has enough. This does concern me but since the ball is already rolling, I figure that explaining our position on it, why we don't buy everything we want, why some things are just not worth the money, is a good start. She will understand eventually.

But, I also think it is not good to completely deny them some of the stuff. That would just make them crazy about wanting it. So, another thing we are doing is letting dd save some of her money for more engines. We got her a piggy bank and daddy and I pop our leftover change in it a few times a week and count the money with her a few times a month. When she has around $10-15, we go shopping for a new engine. Other than that, she gets told she can also ask for those things at her birthday or christmas.

I am hopeful that this will impart on her our values but as this is my first, I would love to read what others do.

[water]

When my kids are littler, I just try to avoid, avoid, avoid. No TV, no character clothes/ dishes/ etc etc.,we shop at a coop mostly, so there are no checkout line temptations, and then when we are at Target or wherever, I guess it's enough of a novelty to get to look at/ feel the stuff, and they don't usually ask to take it home.

Now my ds is four, I have started discussing advertising explicitly with him, he notices it in magazines, and on billboards, and asks about the "cool" car he sees, and I explain that the car companies want to make it look really cool so that you will buy it, and that what they tell you might not be the whole truth about the car. I haven't gotten into it in detail yet, mostly just when he notices, and sometimes I point out advertisments when we drive by them and mention something like "do you think that car can really drive on the moon?" or whatever, just so he starts to think critically about it.

I think that as they get older, it will be impossible to avoid the marketing completely, so I want to innure them to the effects of it by makig them conscious consumers.

[georgia]

Have y'all read this (http://www.mothering.com/guest_editors/kids_commercialism/kids_commercialism.html)?

The organization looks fantastic, too :)

[Llyra]

My DD is still only a toddler, so this has not become a major issue for us yet. We don't have a TV, and we don't buy books that are based on TV characters, and she's never seen a movie, so we've managed to avoid it so far. My mom does occasionally buy DD Sesame Street toys, but without having seen the show on TV, they mean very little to DD.

As she gets older, though, I anticipate a lot of trouble with this. There will probably have to be a lot of negotiation, and also a lot of times where I'll have to say no and tell her why.

I do think that extremely limited television watching will help, and so will homeschooling-- if she's not in that intense peer environment all day, the pressure from friends will be less of a factor for her.

I dunno. I guess I'm gonna figure it out as we go along, as she grows.

[The4OfUs]

Funny you should mention it......Just yesterday, we were watching Food TV, and a Sunny Delight commercial came on (shudder)...the kids were frolicking on the beach, they takled about beign healthy and whatever and quenching thirst with something good for you, fruit "flavored", and then down in the corner of the screen it says, very small print, very faint grey text "Contains 5% juice.". NICE.

Sooo, even though DS is only 2, I took the opportunity to say something along the lines of...

you know, the BEST thing to drink when you're thirsty and playing is water. This is saying this drink is healthy, but it is mostly sugar and only a teeny bit of juice...sometimes companies do things to make their stuff look better than it acutally is to get you to buy it. Would you like some water?

I have LONG had plans - before I even met my DH - to make comments about commercials to my child(ren), as well as about famous people on TV and in magazines, that they don't *really* look like that, etc. etc. so that they will not get sucked in to the vortex and will think critically about images presented to them....my parents sucessfully produced a non-spoiled, non-greedy, non-beauty obsessed, critically thinking ONLY child (even my DH couldn't believe I was an only when he was getting to know me, based on other "maintstream" onlies he had known) by using the same techniques (and also not buying many things for me outside of special occasions - I think that helps A LOT) so I know it can work, and I'm already starting to do it with DS.

As far as if he gets hard set on a particular item, I would probably wait until a birthday or special occasion to buy it, giving him time to make sure he really, really wanted it. I'm just not going to get into the practice of regularly buying him thingsin the first place.

My SIL did the same with her kids, and it was always a joy to go out with them. I can remember distinctly taking them out when they were about 3 and 6, going into a store, them playing with some of the toys in the store and looking at a lot of them, us then saying, "OK, time to go!" and then happily putting the stuff back and not mentioning a thing about it.

I've also heard a couple people mention starting "wish lists" so when you kid asks for something, you can put it on the list and then when an occasion comes around, go through the list and ask what they still think they want.

I'm also not a big character-licensed person (except I love tigger and snoopy :bag: ), so I don't think it will be a big issue here either, cause the kids won't be exposed to it. We go out of our way to NOT buy clothes, shoes, toys, toothbrushes, cups, etc. with characters on them, so hopefully, as with most other things, they will learn by our modeling.

[maya44]

Interestingly my kids were exposed to it all. We have no real limits on TV (excpet for inappopriately violent etc...).

I think character stuff is "tacky" but don't care that much. And my kids were NEVER obsessed by this stuff. NEVER.

They knew if they really, really wanted it I would probably get it for them. But even from an early age they seemed concious of not abusing my "generosity"

Don't know why though.

[ThinkBlu]

Kid's are still young, but this really hasn't been an issue yet. We don't have TV, so I'm sure that helps, and our family is very much a family of routines and shopping, with the exception of groceries, really isn't something we do that much so that may help too.

During the times that we do shop, (groceries - weekly as a family, Hobby/toy store, fish/pet store or eBay occosionally - but mostly to browse, Kohl's, Target, or Walgreen's - rarely) it seems that the habits we created early have stuck. This is what we buy, this is what we sometimes buy, and this is what we don't. From the time that DS1 was very little, it was not uncommon that a HotWheel car would end up in our grocery cart, but not uncommon that we just looked without buying either, and it just seems to work out. There was a short period were we would be proactive and tell DS as we were entering the store that we were just going to look today, and he always seemed to respect that. We are not absolutely oposed to character stuff, (we have lots of Thomas the Train) and when we do occasionally rent movies, we may afterwords do a web or eBay search for "Herbie the Love Bug" or for "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", just to see what's out there and to talk about it, and though DS knows that much of the stuff is for sale, (perhaps because it is on a screen and not right in front of him), there isn't the pressure to buy.

When we do buy stuff we talk a lot about value and quality and we often decide what we want and then involve the kids in the search as we look on-line and on eBay and we talk about what we find as we go, then when we do purchase, there is often a week of waiting for it to arrive in the mail, so it's not immediate gratification.

[IdentityCrisisMama]

Thanks, everyone. This is interesting to me so far. I can understand the whole "it's just not an issue for us" because there are many challenges that parents face that we just don't have an issue with. Unfortunately, this isn't one of them.

Regarding TV and exposure, we do have a TV but we don't actually have TV programming and DC has never watched TV with traditional commercials. However, children's TV (even PBS!) is basically one big commercial, imo, so we limit that quite a bit. We don't rent movies for DC and I try not to buy things with cross marketed stuff on it.

But, it's still really hard. DC gets this stuff from being out and about in the day. She even gets it from books. I hate the idea of censoring what books she chooses from the library but that stuff is also cross marketed. Magic School Bus. They even had an ad for a movie on display at the story time at the library and I'm 75% sure the librarian made a marketing plug for a Gymboree puppet she uses. (she definitely plugged it but I'm not sure if Gymboree put her up to it...maybe she just loved the thing. I don't know)

Also, beyond the actual products, there is just so much stuff. Friends, give gifts all the time or offer to buy stuff for DC when we're out. Yea, we give stuff away but going into Goodwill these days is somewhat sickening to me. How disposable everything is. I really don't feel good about buying stuff...even quality stuff that we don't really need (or REALLY want). I mean, I struggle with consumerism myself. Don't get me wrong. It's just that it seems like the worst of the worst is on the childhood level.

Georgia, I did look over that when they put it up last month but didn't get too into it because I was reading Consuming Kids, which is about the marketing strategies used against families. After reading that though, I'm inspired and this is a real hot issue for me so I'll definitely get more into the site. Thanks for the reminder!!

Incidentally, I had a few IRL friends, who don't use the MDC discussion forum, send me a link to the CCFC site! :thumb

I'm off for the weekend but am eager to get back here to read more of your input. Thanks.

[Soundhunter]

We believe in everything in moderation, so we have no problems with exposing Emma to the mainstream media, in small doses. As coercive parents, we also have no problem saying no to something that we think is innapropriate, or to cheap disposable items that we think are morally wrong due to environmental values, or because we don't want to be in the habit of impulse buying every time we feel like it (for any of us, adults or kids) I am counting on our general attempts to not find the bulk of our happiness in materialism to be a family value that is strong enough to help our kids navigate an insanely materialistic society. We also like the "band" Negativland a lot, and commonly have adbusters issues laying around, our children will be educated on how the marketing and advertising industries work by other media influences such these (Negativland has an entire album sampling and mocking pepsi advertising, adbusters is an anti-consumerism/advertising publication) I also worked in sales and marketing, so think I can teach about this topic well, without feeling that we need to avoid all media where it can be found.

[ETW]

DS (22 months) is still really young for this kind of problem but I'll share what we've done so far.

DS isn't exposed to a lot of advertising geared at kids -- we do watch TV/videos in our family but mostly sports or children's videos when DS is awake. He does like some character stuff (we all love Thomas) and he got a Thomas train set for Christmas. It came with a big catalog of all the other sets that are available and DS loves that catalog and wants almost everything in it. Rather than discouraging looking at it we looked at the catalog with him, oohed and aahed over the stuff that looked good, said things like "if I could pick any of these sets I think I'd pick this one because ...", and when he said he wanted things we'd say "we'll have to put that on the wish list." He did at one point tell me "getting mad at wish list" which I thought was pretty perceptive of him. I empathized with him and showed him catalogs that I like telling him "mommy wants everything in this catalog but we'll have to decide if we really want any of this stuff and save up for it." I'm actually very happy with how he's responded -- he'll happily look through the Thomas catalog and point out "we have this" and "we don't have this" and talk about the characters without getting upset that we can't have all of it.

We get a lot of lame books as gifts so if we're buying books ourselves we all have to agree on a book since Mommy and Daddy have to spend a lot of time reading the book too. We'll read him almost anything at the book store but it only comes home if we all really like it. The other day we were at Borders to pick him out some new books and nothing was really working for us. We read quite a few books while we were there and when we didn't find anything we liked I was really worried about leaving empty handed since we'd told him we were going to buy him a book. I was prepared to buy something inexpensive and ok if he got upset but when we asked if he wanted to buy anything he said he didn't. :shrug

We try to keep the amount of stuff we have within reason, but we don't limit buying to special occasions. If we see something really cool or he seems ready for a particular type of toy and no holiday is coming up we just buy it. We're also planning to give him a little allowance so he can save for things himself once he's old enough to understand the concept. We talked about it a little when the whole Thomas catalog situation came up and decided that he doesn't really understand how money or even ownership works yet so we're holding off on the allowance for a while.

We talk about stuff we see all the time (manipulative advertising, wasteful products, etc) so I hope that DS will pick up our values about these kinds of things fairly naturally.

[BellinghamCrunchie]

I think that i have mentioned before that as a child I had this little fantasy that I would open a drawer to get dressed in the morning and there would just be a gift in there. And so maybe 4 times a year, I stick something in my dd's underwear drawer and it is just a total suprise in the morning.



Aw... that is just wonderful. Can you be my mom? :)

I think its a great idea, and will help satisfy my gift-giving urges; and I think I'll include DH, too!

[bookwitch]

I LOVE this idea (having your child just open up a drawer and there will be something there.) What a wonderful idea. I know that wasn't the purpose of this post, but thanks!

[maya44]

Oh Thank you! BTY, tonight they are getting gifts. I LOVE it when they wake up to find them!