“What Kid Needs That Many Toys?”
Posted on November 26th, 2008 – 11:16 AMBy May Chen
I got in this morning to this e-mail rant from Kara McGuire, our fellow Ka-blogger.
She continued: “And what kid who is young enough for an Elmo doll really “wants” any toy unless their parents or commercials influence them? This is one of those NYT stories that seems written just to bug me.”
Here’s the story that got Kara all steamed up: “To Buy Children’s Gifts, Mothers do without…”
10 Responses to "“What Kid Needs That Many Toys?”"
I read the NYT story and felt similarly irritated. I mean, my mom, sister and I all agreed just to buy presents for the kids, too, but not so we could spend outlandish amounts of money on them. My son loves Elmo, but he doesn’t NEED an Elmo doll and will be just fine with some plain wooden blocks that will probably hold his interest much longer and cost a lot less. The woman in that NYT story is shown next to huge boxes of stuff that she’s giving to her daughter. I guarantee the kid will not remember it as a huge sacrifice that her mom made for her. She probably won’t remember it at all.
That article is disgusting. Am I supposed to feel sorry that the woman isn’t getting her designer jeans and new dishwasher so she could buy her daughter a $250 play kitchen? Nope, I don’t feel sorry at all.
I just read a bunch of the online comments to the NYT story, and now I’m betting that woman is going to wish she’d never spoken to a reporter in her life. Kara should feel comforted that her reaction (and mine and Anna’s) seems to be the norm. Nobody feels too sorry for a lady with a three-car garage full of toys crying over giving up her designer jeans.
Kind of going back to the topic of the piece, I’m going to be a little bit of a of the bad parent and say that we’re skipping presents this year and providing more for the baby. For us, we very seldom do presents, usually we’ll agree that down the road we will take a trip, or buy something together, etc. But with a child who has a birthday a little too close to Christmas, we want to enforce early that her day is special, and Christmas is also a special day, and not have her growing up with “combo” presents or other things that makes her feel like her birthday is overlooked. So she’ll probably get a lot of “stuff”. Although if we’ve learned nothing in the last year, it’s that she likes boxes and baskets and isn’t so big on toys.
We are setting spending limits for both holidays for her, though, of $75 each. I guess that could have been a pair of designer jeans? I don’t know — I haven’t bought myself anything in years… 
Certainly there are mothers out there who are spending less on themselves to give their children a “merrier” Christmas, but somehow it seems that the journalist could have chosen a better example? My goodness, she must give up her designer denim - my heart just aches for her. How about teaching her daughter about truly underprivileged children and that it is better to give than receive?
Robin ~ I’m right there with you. I also have a daughter with a birthday very close to Christmas and don’t want her to get the “combo” gifts. They are two separate events and should be celebrated separately. But even pre-baby we didn’t have mountains of presents because we buy things we want throughout the year, so especially for my husband, I use Christmas as a time to get him new clothing and some other things he has been wanting. With our anny a few weeks after Christmas (yes, it’s an expensive time in our house) we sometimes do a larger Christmas-anny present to ourselves than individual items.
The memories of Christmas are much more important than what ends up under the tree or in the stocking.
Mama sewed till midnight for a month before Christmas and Daddy built doll closets and old-fashioned stilts. My sisters and loved them and we cherished them so much that we were able to hand them down to daughters and nieces.Our kids were thrilled when grandpa built them stilts when they were 8 or 10 years. They were the envy of every kid in the neighborhood. I have even wrapped gifts in the Sunday funnys when my budget was too strained.
Now my son goes to garage sales to get
terrific bargains on out-grown toys.
I can’t believe we are supposed to feel sorry for her because she gave up her designer jeans. How about giving something up to feed your family or clothe them rather than wasting so much money on presents your kids will play with and then forget about? We set a budget each year on how much we spend on everyone. My children are happy no matter how many or how few toys they get. Christmas isn’t about receiving gifts, but rather about spending time with family. How about giving her daughter a memory of spending time together instead of a play kitchen?
Ditto ditto ditto. Maybe we midwestern families are just a bit more real. I’ve never even tried on designer jeans. .
Ditto! Once I saw the picture at the top of the article, I nearly quit reading. Then I saw “designer jeans” and read the rest with a bad taste in my mouth. What kid needs $1000 in toys? I don’t care who you are, that’s just obnoxious. Rather a couple of nice simple things that will last for years then a pile of the latest fad that will be broken and ignored in a couple of months. Teaching the kids to appreciate what they’ve got is more important that the big pile of gifts!
One thing we’ve done this year is to focus on simpler things that mean more. That’s meant lots of handmade gifts…some made by myself and my husband, but lots are just really neat things I’ve found on etsy.com! Their gift guides have some amazing suggestions! They’re not necessarilly Walmart bargain prices, but I keep a pretty tight budget all around for the holidays and was still able to find really cool things for everyone that were totally unique!
