'Our kids have too much junk'

There used to always be one "Flounder" in your class back in the day. Now we have classrooms filled with "Flounders."
 
I remember the first time I took my son to a birthday party for one of his pre-school classmates. They were both 3 years old. About 15 kids were at a long table eating pizza and cake. Another table about the same length was filled with presents, at that's the way it always went. For f'ning three year olds. I immediately decided to try to convince all the parents to stop that and just pool donations to get one really nice gift. I never managed to convince more than one or two parents, and gave up around about the second grade, but I told everyone I wasn't bringing presents and we didn't expect them. My son only exchanges presents with his closest friends.

Which isn't to say the house doesn't have a lot of video game crap.
 
I don't believe it is necessarily bad for a child to get several presents on their birthday, or at Christmas, with most of them not being extravagant, or expensive gifts. I believe a big part of the thrill is the act of opening the gifts.

Other than that, it's perfectly fine to surprise and/or reward a child, but I also believe that kids shouldn't just get "stuff" given to them on a frequent basis for no particular reason.

Just my opinion.
 
Most people have too much junk.

I once read somewhere that 99% of consumer goods are no longer in use six months after purchase. That number is staggering. I dunno how they arrived at that figure, or if it includes food (which would skew the number greatly), but it's still pretty eye-opening.
 
we take back about half of hte gifts and buy formula/diapers/necessities with the proceeds. (did I really just type that? )
redface.gif
 
If you feel your child has received too many gifts, let them pick out a few they want and take the rest to a charity for abused, or underprivileged children. There are in virtually every community and desperate for donations. Take the child with you and help them learn first hand about sharing with those less fortunate.

My son is gone now, but for several years we have gotten a wish list from a child every Christmas and had a blast shopping for them together. Now it's pretty much just me, but I still do it.
 
I like that Third. The other thing is to stress how important it is for your child to purcahse the gift and to understand why they are using their own money.
 
With our kids, it got to the point that we almost dreaded Christmas and birthdays. They had gifts coming out their ears. Same for all those "candy holidays" and the buckets of candy they'd end up bringing home. Dealing with the candy was easy... after a day or two, it went in the trash. With the toys, we had them purge some old toys to make room for the new ones. The old toys went to Goodwill.

Our kids went to Child's Day in Austin, and every cotton-pickin' kid would have a birthday party where everyone was invited. With more than one kid attending Child's Day at a time, we had a birthday party to attend most weekends. Ugh!

We, too, do the adopt-a-kid thing every Christmas. We usually wait until most of the tags have been picked from the tree at the mall, and invariably, the last names are mostly boys age 10+. Our kids enjoy buying these gifts more than gifts for their siblings.
 
For back to school, our church partners with others in our area to provide back to school clothes and school supplies for something like 1,600 kids in the Belton school district. Truly a massive number in my eyes.
This year we got clothes for a Sr. at Belton High. My 2 1/2 year old picked out the 'tag' with his name on it. We went shopping and let her help pick out his clothes. We also sponsor a child in Tanzania through an organisation and she sits down with the wife and they talk about what they should write to him in the letters we send.
I think that while I KNOW our kids are spoiled (mainly by grandparents) and have way more than they need, that we are trying to teach them to aways give to those who have less and are in need, and to do this both locally and globally.

PS.. not the right place, but for those who remember, our church is now at funding for 4 1/2 wate wells in Darfur funded!
 
My 11 yo just had his birthday and we ended up asking each guest to bring a couple of canned food items for the food bank. This was one of his favorite activities for cub scouts.

All he wanted was the fellowship and activities with his friends.

It worked out really well as he was able to donate 40 cans of food as several guests brought more than two.
 
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