My 3-Year Old is an Advertisers Dream
I knew there was a reason we don’t watch much TV in this house. My daughter has her collection of beloved DVDs, almost all of them involving a princess of some sort. And she likes Clifford and SuperWhy on PBS. That’s all she watches and she doesn’t watch that often.
Sunday morning, she and I went into the living room and curled up with hot chocolate to snuggle for a little while. She asked if she could watch Cinderella and I said sure. She went to the TV to turn it on an do her whole little routine of switching it to video mode, then putting in the DVD and starting it up. See why I’m lazy? She does everything for me 
She turned the TV on and it was on CBS from the night before. It was The Care Bears. We’ve never seen that before and she decides she’d like to watch that instead of a DVD. I agree and we snuggle up and talk about the show and what is happening and who all the cute little bears are. Then a commercial comes on. One after another we got bombarded with 6 commercials all for toys and girly stuff. And she watched, eyes eliged out, and then begged me for every single thing she saw on that TV over the 20 minutes we sat there and through the two rounds of commercials.
I was so irritated! We’ve been having all sorts of talks about “just because we want something doesn’t mean we get it. You don’t need that, so no, you may not have it” stuff lately because she’s had a case of what you may call The Gimmies. “But I waaaaaant it”. It’s bad enough when I have to take her out to do errands that she sees stuff she’s constantly asking for. But seeing girls on TV playing with toys she doesn’t have nearly pushed her (and me) over the edge.
I must have been successful at getting something through her head because after talking about it for a little while, she said “Would you have to BUY those toys? So you’d need money for them? And daddy would have to work more?” Yep. Then, “well, maybe I’ll ask for one for my birthday. And when I get a new toy, I’ll give away an old toy to someone else who needs it so I don’t have too much stuff.”
Now we’re talking.
No more CBS. We’ll stick to DVDs, thankyouverymuch.
I absolutely agree - I don’t even like commercials for myself (except during the Super Bowl!). We rarely watch TV when Sofia is awake and I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like when she’s older and can understand more - dvds or tivo is the way to go.
Wow. I haven’t yet had the pleasure of watching commercials with my child…. My mom didn’t really get that either because we watched Reading Rainbow for 2 years before squirrels broke into our attic and destroyed our tv’s wiring. Mom and Dad just didn’t replace it. They went the renting route, still entertaining but no commercials.
It’s easy now, but when they hit those teenage years and “all my friends have one,” it drives you crazy! My oldest daughter thinks shopping for clothes at the mall is the best thing in the world. For vacation, we’re traveling to Yellowstone. Her question: Is it anywhere near the Mall of America?
She is about to get a dose of reality. Her little job is going to start financing her clothing lifestyle!