Janet McNeill

<written early 1990’s?>

These are a few general principles about raising children that I hope can help with the challenge of saving pennies, yet still doing a fine job as parents.

Too many toys… Truth is, it is definitely possible for children to have too many toys! I’m guessing most middle-class North American children these days do. Having so much to choose from is actually downright overwhelming! Children have never needed a mountain of things and also can’t possibly appreciate them when there is so much. It’s better if they have fewer, and are not constantly receiving new ones. A constant infusion of new things just helps fuel short attention spans and a serious lack of appreciation or gratitude. It also helps creates high consumer demands from a very early age. In other words, giving children too much stuff, too soon and too often, helps get that “gimme, gimme, gimme” habit going early on.

Limiting tv watching… Too much television watching also leads straight to attacks of “the gimmes.” A lot of North American families rely heavily on the tube, not just for entertainment, but also for babysitting, but we certainly do ourselves (and especially our children) a huge disservice with this unfortunate habit. Children watch all those ads and figure they’ve just got to have this, that, and the other thing they’ve seen on TV. Once they have it, of course, they lose interest quickly, because the next fad has already grabbed their attention. How to get around this problem? Keep the darn thing turned off as much as possible! Institute a family rule limiting TV-watching to, say, an hour maximum per day (when children are very small, they shouldn’t be watching at all!). At the very least, limit small children’s viewing to those channels with innocent (i.e., non-violent) shows and no ads. Since television watching has the other unfortunate result of “dumbing us down” (it’s basically junk food for our minds), your child will wind up being not just less of a consumer the more you keep the “idiot box” turned off – s/he will also be smarter. Of course, not having television at all is also an option! I would add that minimizing computer time is also a pretty good idea. Most of us spend far too much time in front of computers these days, from early childhood on, and I think we’d all be better off to limit our exposure to them. Time spent outside, or with friends, or reading (or being read to) are always preferable…

Kids pick favourites… I was happy to discover when my own children were young that they generally picked one or two favorite outfits among their clothes that they wanted to wear to the exclusion of almost all else. We can fill our kids’ drawers and closets with expensive outfits if we choose, and if we can afford it, but the odds are a lot of it will wind up getting very little use!

Hand-me-downs… Most things families need – from baby carriages to cribs, bikes, skates, clothes, the family car and so on – can be bought second-hand. Almost every community has a second-hand store and/or an organization like Goodwill, the Salvation Army and/or Value Village. Yard sales yield terrific bargains, skate and ski exchanges still exist, and the newspaper is always full of ads selling used things. Clothing trades among family members and friends can also save you a bundle. I know my sister was an absolute life-saver to me when my children were small, with her donations of clothing and baby gear, and my girls enjoyed the hand-me-downs that they had seen their beloved cousins wearing before them!

Kid trades, haircuts & libraries… I began doing “kid trades” when my first child was still an infant! Friends and I took turns looking after our collective brood, while the others played squash. I swear by kid trades – and babysitting co-ops (although I never took part in the latter, I think the concept rocks!). As for haircuts, I migrated early to a woman who did this from home; her rates were fantastically reasonable. My personal take on libraries is that they are humankind’s most civilized creation! They’re utterly free, democratic and accessible to all. Children can benefit greatly from regular library patronage – as can their parents.

Free Stuff My Kids Had Fun With… Have you ever heard that kids often have more fun with the box something arrived in, than they do with the toy itself? It’s absolutely true! Many of us persist in thinking we have to spend a fortune on our children – but clearly, we really don’t.

When my children were really young, they used to have a grand time taking pots and pans out of the kitchen cupboards and spreading them all over the floor. This sometimes made meal preparation rather challenging for me, given the mess and the noise, but it did keep them happy and more or less out of trouble. They also used to have fun stacking things together – things like margarine containers or even a bunch of the little plastic measuring cups that come with medicines. I remember watching one of my daughters be entertained, when she was very small, putting three hair barrettes in and out of an empty dental floss container (from which I had removed the metal parts, of course). It got me through the dishes, and she was enthralled! My girls could also spend an amazing amount of time doing things like gathering up pinecones…and getting pretty excited about it, too.

They used to have a ball with empty cardboard boxes from the drugstore – big ones that I’d bring home for them. Even just falling in and out of one fifty times seems to have given them a big thrill (there is no accounting for the things that will amuse little people, hmmm?). Bath-time was an eye-opener for me when it came to which toys had real play value in my girls’ eyes. For them, an empty plastic honey container with a spray nozzle, an empty margarine container, and a cheap sponge could never be beat. Never mind the fancy $30. bath toy bought from a store – they knew what they liked!

Dress-up clothes are a tried-and-true entertainment for all children that I remember well from my own childhood. I got a big kick out of my Mom’s ‘flying saucer hat’ (that’s what we kids called it) and her old dresses, gloves and high-heeled shoes. My own children were known to make use of an old summer top I’d bought when I was a teen-ager (on them it was a dress) and a whole assortment of other cast-offs I couldn’t believe they’d want – but they did, and had oodles of fun with! They used to get a charge out of my old discarded purses, and could play contentedly for quite a while on a long drive extracting from one of them the odds and ends I’d tucked into it (old photos and birthday cards…whatever!).

Many of my daughters’ childhood hours were enjoyed in forts made from blankets and couch cushions or sleeping bags. Forts are the best! In fact, I can recall from my own childhood playing under a table that had a blanket thrown over it. It was my very own space, it was small and cozy, and I was as happy in it as the proverbial pig!

Imaginary games were something my kids had more and more fun with, the older they became – playing store, restaurant, “poor shop” or…whatever! I’m pretty convinced that the less television children watch, the more creative their imaginations become. Reading helps too. They can act out the parts of some favorite story, just as my own friends and I used to do back in Grade 5, with Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books.

I’ve long believed that children are at their happiest and best when they are playing either with friends, or outside – preferably both at the same time! It’s pretty clear to me that fun need have nothing whatsoever to do with toys, and certainly not with money, either. We really don’t have to spend a fortune to please our kids; often it’s the smallest, simplest things that provide the best play value and the most fun. So, whatever you do, don’t fuss about not having oodles of money to spend, entertaining children (or dressing them, either – expensive labels mean absolutely nothing to small children!). These will likely become a greater challenge as they grow older, due to the influence of friends, the media, and the ads that conspire to keep us all enslaved by perpetual consumption. Be sure to enjoy your (and their) freedom from these influences as long as you can!

Janet