The Siren Call of Stuff (part 2)

Fretting about my children asking for more, more more stuff has got me thinking not just about the annoyance factor (though admittedly it is annoying to have to say "no" eight frillion times in every store we must enter for things such as milk or batteries). I have also been thinking hard about why they ask. About what they really want. About my obligation to give them a sense of how lucky they are and my own desire to teach them to appreciate what they do have. About how to teach them the value of working for things, and about the satisfaction that comes from having stuff one has earned rather than simply been handed.

And about the fact that they are only 3 1/2 and nearly-6 years old.

It seems obvious to posit that a general American sense of "bigger and more is always better" influences my children's desires. And yet, I do think that they are a bit young for that to be the only factor. They do not have a clear sense yet of their own futures (19 and 69 are basically the same age in their minds), and their ideas of what they want to be when they grow up run the gamut from race car driver to "skateboard guy" to elephant. Between that and my own careful limiting of their access to commercials, American Consumerism is not solely to blame.

It is certainly true that Target and its plethora of goods beckons. Already, at 3, my daughter knows that. And perhaps she has internalized already the vastness of consumer possibility represented by that bullseye. The aisle after aisle of anything anyone could want is alluring, even to the very young. But she is still too young to grasp the concept of money fully: $50 is an almost-unimaginable wealth. The explanation that something costs $8 elicits a deep and impressed "Whoa!" from my son. And I do think that without a clear grasp of some money basics, of the actual cost of living, it is hard to say that their consumer desires are part and parcel of the American ethos that more is better and more cheaper is even better than that.

Nonetheless, I cannot deny, their own lives of privilege are partly to blame for this conundrum. And that is where I get stuck and wrestle with myself about what to do.

Because here's the thing: my children do not lack a single thing they need. They have warm snow boots that fit their ever-growing feet and hot home-cooked dinners and treats like berry-flavored rice cakes to pack in their lunchboxes. They have beds piled with comforters in their own rooms in a well-heated house. They have two parents who love them -- and who have good jobs that include excellent health insurance for the whole family. While they do not always get what they desire, they have never known want. And they have certainly never faced the painful, pinching sort of want that bedevils so many in these times of long-term unemployment (which is just over 15% here in Michigan, the highest in the nation).

It is clear to me that never having lacked for anything they needed, my children do not quite understand why they cannot have everything their little hearts desire. And while I am obviously not going to deny them food, a warm coat or antibiotics to prove a point, I am struggling with how and what I need to say to them or do with them to help them understand the tremendous privileges they already have and to make them more grateful.

I am not shy about telling them that we will not be buying certain toys because they are too expensive. I have no problem sticking to my guns about making a disobedient child dip into his piggybank to help replace the broom he broke through his shenanigans. I explain what we are doing when we make donations to the Salvation Army pot at the holidays or collect gently-worn clothes for the Purple Heart truck every other month. And I feel that at their ages, there are limits to what one can reveal about the hardships in the world.

But here's the rub I cannot ignore: that very ignorance is itself a privilege.

There are children their ages the world over who know in no uncertain terms about profound hardship through their own experience. There are children who live within 25 miles of their own house who know.

And yet, one cannot simply lecture them about how lucky they are all the time. "There are starving children in ____" was the stock phrase a generation or two ago, used to coerce fractious children in comfortable homes to clean their full dinner plates. But cliches like that only serve to breed resentment, not understanding.

We have talked about the local food bank as we participate in food drives. We have talked about children whose families cannot buy them warm mittens as we collect winter outerwear. But while those conversations are quiet and feel powerful when they are happening, and while my children ask pointed questions about the how? and why? that I try to answer as honestly as I can without overwhelming them with information, those lessons seem to evaporate as soon as they latch onto a new desire of their own.

But why can't I buy...? they whine. The evicted child in the family shelter, the one who will be wearing my child's outgrown mittens tonight, is forgotten. And anyway, that child is not them. They may have curiosity and empathy, but they do not have the logic to make the connection to their own privilege and be grateful.

Perhaps this is because children -- all children -- are innately self-focused creatures. This is not to suggest they cannot be kind or altruistic or empathetic on occasion, but rather that the infant who cries to remedy its own condition (feed me! or change me! or warm me! it demands, in its only, wordless, loud way) is not that far from the preschooler who whines to establish the boundaries of its world. I want more! it cries, perhaps because it wants more, or perhaps because it wants a limit. It wants a "no." It wants a thousand thousand NOs so that it can figure out exactly where its parameters lie. Perhaps, in much the same way that young children test the boundaries of our discipline (when does no really mean no? Will I get the thing I want with whining? or will the rule about how whining gets you nothing really stick all the time and always?), they test the boundaries of our fulfillment of their wish for stuff.

After all, consumer desires are, at root, simply desires. They are wants. And children beg to be told which of their wants are good for them and which are not. Above all, they desperately want us to be consistent about how we respond to those wants. The need for sleep? They will push and push, cajole and wheedle for one more story, one more drink, but if we are firm and consistent about what constitutes a bedtime routine, they eventually realize we will not relent, and so they do. And everyone gets more and better sleep as a result.

How, I ask myself, is their seduction by the notion of stuff any different? They want candy for breakfast? I say no. Every morning for weeks, sometimes. But the answer is never yes. They want to buy junky stuff in the store when we are on a quest for fresh fruit and veggies? I say no. Always. I think, I hope, that I am teaching them that some purchases are necessary and others are luxuries. Surely, chocolate chips are not strictly necessary, and we buy those, but the basic point that we are on a shopping trip for what we need to eat must sink in sometime. At least, I hope.

And so I try to teach them about money and its value. I have lately been offering them the option to spend their good behavior chips, which they are each accruing, on the things over which they pine. It is my hope that setting a price tag in chips might help them learn about the cost of what they want. (4 chips = $1 is my rough calculation of cost.) Interestingly, both of them are saving up for special things (a movie date with me, a sleep over, or other privileges), and so when it comes down to them buying with their chips, they tend to choose not to spend. With any luck, this system will help them begin to see that we all have to make choices about where and how we spend.

But it still doesn't solve the larger problem of being grateful for what they have. And teaching gratitude is very very difficult -- particularly because they have no clear vision of what life is like for someone who does not have the things they take for granted. And, really, how can a 5 year old imagine what it is like to go to school hungry every day if he does not have to? Thus, I feel somewhat at a loss about how to teach gratitude. What sorts of volunteering might help teach these lessons? We have done things like stuff bears and tie blankets for children's hospitals, but those types of work still leave them fully insulated: they are making things for faceless children whose lives they cannot even begin to imagine.

At what point do I give them a vision of some of that reality? I feel now is not yet the time. But when? And how will I know? And what are the best ways to do it? What do you do with your own children?