So many of my friends have the exact same problem without the introspection you’re demonstrating. A lot of us grew up not even willing to ask our parents for anything so when we have children, we think we’re helping our children by “giving them everything we never had.”  We hated the feeling of wanting as kids. 

But what I recognize now is how my remembrance of my “sense of want” as a kid helped me to be empathetic to others as a child and as an adult.  Even in high school, my friends and I got very small lunch allowances (not enough to cover even 3 days of lunch) but my parents didn’t know this and we would never tell them.  So a few friends and I had to be financial MacGyvers and we would put our money into one pot at the beginning of the week and budget so we could all diversify our lunches and stretch our bills. 

I don’t know what you could take away from this but for me, I know my kid feeling the sense of want when it comes to non-essentials isn’t something I’m going to want to squash. 

Thank you so much for sharing this—I’m going to share this with my students when we begin the unit on capitalism.

I had the same experience growing up, Ammerah. I didn’t have money for lunch throughout high school except for the earnings I made on my own; my parents qualified for free or reduced lunches, which my sisters got, but it was embarrassing because the card was a different color than everyone else’s punch card, so when I got to high school age, I just paid cash or went without!

The thing is, I still don’t handle money very well. I never learned growing up or in school and neither did my husband, so we are all about budgeting and accounting for every penny these days, especially with a few situations we’re currently in that are much less than favorable.

I really want my daughter to learn how to manage money at an earlier age, which is why I like the allowance thing; plus, it means we don’t buy her anything throughout the year and she has to budget it herself. We’re not in a position to get her everything she wants anyway, which she’s also learning (she asks about me making money when I work, wants to know what we have to pay, and things that I’m not even sure she should know just yet!). But you’re right, I do want her to know what it feels like to have that “sense of want” I grew up with, too. I’m just trying to strike a balance, and I’m really not sure if it’s working. What if I’m screwing her up?!

And how on earth do I get people to stop giving her things? Even when I say, “No thanks,” they say, “Oh, it’s no big deal!” and hand it straight to her! Then I’m the bad guy for taking it away.   Maybe I just have to suck it up and be the bad guy, huh? And I’ve talked over it with my mother (who does it the most) and she firmly just keeps reiterating that it’s “what grandparents do.”

Thanks for sharing your experience; I hope mine helps with your unit!

I can imagine how tricky it is to bring up a child to appreciate simple living when she’s surrounded by marketing designed to make her want things. I don’t know how those advertisers sleep at night when their work consists of developing in young children the desire for more (food, toys, whatever).

I’m grateful that my parents provided me the basics along with plenty of little luxuries, and that I worked for most of my spending money—chores around the house, babysitting, and eventually a bookstore job. My mom was the same way about having my sister and me clean out our toys periodically and donate them to a local charity. I never missed the extras anyway.

To people who insist on giving gifts to your daughter after a “No thanks,” you might say something like, “We’re actually trying to pare down the number of toys she has. I hope you understand.” I hope they do! If not, you can take comfort in the fact that your child is almost certainly less spoiled than theirs.

Well, that’s one comfort, Melia!

I agree that advertisers simply take it too far, and think that marketing should not be directed at children. Of course, that would be a fantasy world! And no matter how much you try to keep the advertisements out of your child’s life, they still encounter them everywhere—from relatives’ and friends’ houses, billboards, even cereal boxes. We can at least talk about them—“Isn’t that silly? Do you think that would really make you super strong?”
But we just can’t get rid of them 100%.

Hi Sara, I have a five year-old.  Her other mother and I have had so many conversations that sound just like your post!  We live in Louisiana now but when our daughter was ten months old we moved to Barbados for two years.  While expatriation brought us a frankly astonishing amount of privilege, it also wasn’t antithetical to the lessons you’re talking about trying to impart.  Instead, raising our American child *outside* of the United States offered us a valuable chance to adopt the more responsible consumerism ethos of a place where what’s available to buy is always limited and always expensive.  I watched my child acquire these ideas as naturally as she learned to walk and talk.  Of course, we’re back in the states now…

That’s incredible—thank you for sharing! I wish there were a way, outside of living in a shack somewhere, to do that here, too.

Not that there’s anything wrong with a shack—I know families who raised their children in the woods when they were young only to return to the suburbs when they were teens and boy are their lives richer for it, and they’re all so kind and smart!

I’m not willing to leave my huge extended family behind like that right now—nor my work—but other than that route, I’d still like to find a way to really cut down on the consumerism in my daughter’s life—or, at least, find better ways of raising her to be responsible and kind in her choices rather than impulsive and “gimme”!