I just bought it for my sister's daughter - who's totally in a disney princess phase and has been for a couple of years.Quote:
Originally Posted by limewave
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I just bought it for my sister's daughter - who's totally in a disney princess phase and has been for a couple of years.Quote:
Originally Posted by limewave
I think that's a good philosophy! Even the "really good" things are a problem in excess.Quote:
Originally Posted by nj_likes
late to the party.
I was forbidden Barbies and all that good stuff. The only good thing about the way my uber lefty parents raised me is that my brother was able to get CO status for the Vietman war because of thier anti war toy position.
Here's how I handled stuff with my boys. Yes, boys but there are still issues. I explained in terms they could understand WHY we didn't do certain things or allow certain toys at our house.
Example: we didn't buy/permit much Disney stuff. The reasons we ( both of us as parents ) gave 1. Disney repackaged someone else's stories - you explain this correctly and you can have great library adventures finding Milne, Hans Christen Anderson etc and 2. guys sitting around trying to figure out how many products they can market to parents and or kids. Kids GET this stuff.
Same thing with cartoon advertising and toys. If you explain it in kid terms, they easily grasp the concept that someone is just trying to make a buck off of cartoon tagged toothbrushes, underpants and other stuff. But you have to start early.
We did the math on Happy Meals, just how much you were paying for that crappy little toy.
My boy's hearts were broken when Lego sold out and started branding thier blocks with Pizza Hut and a few other things.
I think it's important to encourage imagination through dressups and fantasy play.. so instead of forbidding princess play, if I had daughters I'd find ways to make it creative and imaginative, and not just be reenactment of the latest Disney cartoon. I would spend a lot of time explaining WHY, in terms they could grasp, certain roles might be positive or negative, instead of just not allowing it. And then present the kind of imagination fodder that would be acceptable.
It's eerie now that my boys are pretty much grown, to see how the indoctrination I did about Disney TV cartoon toys and marketing has stayed with them into adult hood, and manifested into some fairly cool social responsibility.
I think with kids you get what you get and there's not a lot you can do to change that. Lots of stories of kids who seek out the things they want/are interested in even when their parents disapprove attest to that.
My DD is definitely NOT the daughter I imagined. While the whole Princess Lifestyle (tm) makes me ill, I loved traditional girl toys growing up--dolls and tea parties and pretend games (I also loved basketball and camping and seeing what I could mix up with my chemistry set, though). So with my DD I was looking forward to getting her baby dolls and playing dress up and having slumber parties with her friends.
Not happening. When someone gave her a Barbie doll, she undressed it, said "look, mommy, a doll with boobies" and then held it by the head and used it's sharp pointy feet as a sword. Then it went into a box and she never touched it again. She DOES play with the play food, but only to feed all of her stuffed animals. She's all about animals and really nothing else--and that's a completely foreign concept to me. I think I had two stuffed animals growing up and they just kinda sat around.
There's no point in trying to change her--she is who she is and likes what she likes, and I love her no matter what she likes. So the American Girl doll was a waste of $100 (it just kinda sits around). The Disney Princess she really likes is the kick-*** Mulan, but overall with Disney movies she'd rather watch Lady and the Tramp and Lion King. I don't think I've ever disapproved of anything she likes, but I have to admit to a few years of confusion as her personality and tastes emerged and I wondered where the heck this was coming from!
Sarah
This is so true. DD (almost 4yo) keeps getting extravagant dolls from one aunt in particular. DD doesn't play with dolls. She has no interest in them. The in-laws ask me what she wants for presents and I always say: soccer or swim lessons, a camelbak (she keeps asking for one), flashcards . . . Then they look at me quizzically and say "I want to get her something SHE can use."Quote:
Originally Posted by sfa
Didn't I just tell them?
But they continue to buy her dolls that sit at the bottom of her toy box. She likes to play sports. She likes to play "School" with her baby brother. I never see her playing with "toys" of any kind.
No, it's not. Homeschooling does not equal social, cultural, religious, ethnic or any other kind of isolation. There are as many different types of homeschoolers as there are people who send their kids to brick-and-mortar school. Please do not perpetuate that stereotype.Quote:
I guess the present-day equivalent is home schooling.
I'm visiting out of town and don't have easy internet access, so I may or may not be able to post in this thread again. This explains my rather direct reply.
Karen
uh yeah, wowQuote:
Originally Posted by Tuckervill
Yes certainly the stereo type of the overprotective, isolationist home school families exist BUT there are as many kinds of home school variations as there are colors of skin on the planet. I agree don't perpetuate the stereo type of homeschools as a bunch of isolationist fanatics...Quote:
Unless you homeschool and don't let your kids play with other kids . . . then you can't control everything they are exposed to.
I personally know:
-education co-op types, with huge amounts of intellectual and social input from a variety of sources (field trips, community experiences,visiting experts, shared teaching);
- religious/isolationist home schoolers;
-hippie-granola home schoolers;
-waldorf type family education groups
-gifted kids working way past their grade level with parent and community support;
-trouble maker kids who's parents "home school" them but this just means the kid watches tv and skateboards all day,
This is why I am such a proponent of telling a kid why, in their terms, something is the way it is at our house.
I haven't read all of the replies, but I think kids will be what they want to be... regardless of influence from parents. I am so not a girly girl... but my 4 year old however, yikes... she is totally girly. She tells me she wants to be a ballerina (she's never taken dance classes) and she LOVES shopping for all manner of girly things (I hate shopping). It's rediculous almost... she loves dolls and ponies and dress up all kinds of things that I just don't "get" because I was just never interested in them as a kid (I was a serious tom boy, as was my sister).
Where does this come from? I have NO idea. I think it's cute, and I do think on some sort of level I may encourage it because it is cute, but on the flip side, she's just as at home playing with toy cars and legos... or going out and getting dirty in the yard, and my boys are just as at home playing tea party with her or playing with otherwise "girly" things.. because I try not to push much gender-bias on any of them and nothing really has a "label" attached to it - if it's fun, imaginative play, it's fair game in this house :D
To kind of add a dimension to this thread...
I just finished reading Alfie Kohn's book, Unconditional Parenting, and it really is about being engaged in your children's lives and letting them be who they are. I thought it was a great read. We just really need to be in tune with what might be influencing our kids' interests and make sure that it's for their own good.
DH just forwarded me this site.
Perhaps this is what my brother-in-law would not like to happen-- daughter wanting stuff to bought on the Disney theme.Quote:
Originally Posted by limewave
Princess stuff is ok especially when it's homemade stuff and creative, harmless (non-hurtful to other children in terms of status) role playing that the kids make up on their own. Based on fairytales they might have read or seen in a movie. At least they are creating their own imaginative world, a good thing instead of relying on Disneyifed stuff..that costs money..and more money.
Guess when it gets to the little girl beauty pageants with tiara crap...to me, from a family of 4 sisters and 1 brother, it's just parenting in the wrong direction.
Due to poverty, we only had um..2 dolls amongst all us kids. None of them Barbies. 1 of the dolls was actually.....doll with rough curly blonde hair, blue eyes and wearing....a dirndl. Given as a gift and now I realize, how coincidental that was...since I grew up in German-based Ontario city!
lph, it sounds like we have gone through the same thing - I tried so hard to limit my son's exposure to 'war-like' toys, tv and activities, however, you could go for a walk in the park and he would pick up a stick and he and his friends would be playing 'cops and robbers', pretending it was a gun. Are they hard-wired? Probably the same on the girls side. I grew up with my barbies, loved them, and I don't think it did any harm. To echo Tulip's sentiment, when the parents disapprove of an activity, it can often come off as disapproval of the child. It say let her be.
+10000Quote:
Originally Posted by papaver
Yes, there is research that proves that boys are hardwired to pick up that stick and pretend it's a gun.
A lot of good my no war toy policy did me. My son who is in the Marines played with those little green toy soldiers for hours, read hundreds of books on military history, and was obsessed with the history channel (still is). I didn't try to stop it and I am glad I didn't.