OP-ED
My two cents on...
…Teaching Children Everything
but a Sense of Entitlement
By Jenn Choi
In this exclusive series,
our guest columnistsparents weigh in on the
issues that are closest
to their hearts. This
month, a mother shares
with us how she teaches
her young children to be
grateful through play.
My husband and I hail from immigrant
families who arrived to the US in the
1970s. Both of us grew up poor. When
I was a kid, everything we owned was
either a hand-me-down or picked up
from the curb. My husband and I share
stories of being shaped as latch-key
kids with no toys and high-water jeans.
I hesitated starting a toy-review
blog because I knew my kids would
be testing and playing with most
of the toys. I feared too many toys
would spoil them or make them
ungrateful. The idea of spoiling kids
is incongruous to the parent I want
to be. And yet, I still give them toys
because I love them (the toys and the
kids) so much.
So parents like me face this dilemma:
we want to give our children
everything we did not have. But, we
want them to remember where they
came from either too.
So, I turned to the best tools I have to
make my kids understand: toys. Kids
do not know how big or little your
pay check is. Kids do not understand
what income tax or health insurance
deductibles are either. However, they
do know how much a game cartridge
costs. Or a slice of pizza. This is their
vocabulary – their understanding of
values in our material world. We can
work with that.
The two areas I wanted to most
impart gratitude were food and
play. With food, my
kids were horribly
picky and wasteful.
It was getting out of
hand and so I sought
help from Susan
Roberts, a paediatric
occupational therapist
and author of My
Kid Eats Everything.
She told me kids eat
horrible diets today
because they are just
being “fed”.
“It is such a passive
process now,” she
says. In the past,
until about the mid20th century, kids
joined families in
the kitchen, helping
to prepare food,
setting the table,
clearing the table,
30
Family & Life • Mar 2014
and washing the dishes. Now, “people
eat out much more often, so kids are
not eating what is available, they are
ordering what they want”.
Roberts actually tells families that
even if they go out to restaurants, the
parents should still order the food for
the child. “We have to put the parents
back in charge of food. Right now, the
children are in charge so of course,
they are going to eat gummy bears
and goldfish crackers.”
For my eldest son, a nine-year-old,
we had a mission: to grill our Fourth
of July barbecue cheeseburgers. As
we began our very first step – buying
food – I suddenly understood how
this could work. In the butcher shop,
my son asked me where the “round
circle” hamburgers were. He had no
idea what ground beef really looked
like or how it was made.
At home, he donned his apron and
got to work, cracking eggs and
kneading the meat with his bare
hands. I thought he would be grossed
out but he was beaming with pride.
He formed and grilled the patties,
sliced the tomatoes, and babysat his
burgers. I don’t think I have ever seen
my son eat a burger so fast in his life.
He watched all of us eat ours, too. He
was so grateful that he even washed
the dishes.
Teaching my children to be grateful
for their toys was very challenging
because they just have so many. So
I decided to challenge them with the
one they love the most: Lego bricks.
As with our Fourth of July
cheeseburgers, I brought my children
in on the buying process. I decided
to physically bring them to an actual
brick-and-mortar Lego store and
teach them how to shop smart. Now
that I shop for everything online,
I often forget what kind of impact
shopping with the kids can have.
Kids can never grow up to be good
consumers unless I teach them how to
recognise value and quality, and there
is no better medium for teaching kids
this than with the subject in which they
have the most expertise: toys.
Once at the LEGO store, we headed
to the Pick-A-Brick Wall, where you
buy as many LEGO bricks as you want,
just as long as your picks can fit into
the two container sizes they offer.
They watched other children dumping
handfuls of bricks into the containers.
My kids were about to do the same but
I asked them to be more mindful about
what they wanted to make and how
many bricks they could actually fit into
the container.
I gave the kids two options: get the
small container and not be questioned
about its contents or the bigger,
more expensive container but only
if they followed my lesson on being
resourceful. I would pay for only one
option. They naturally chose the latter.
I asked them to snap a row of
same-colour bricks together and
then carefully place them into the
container. It was a time-consuming
process, best done sitting on the
floor of the store. Once they started,
though, it was so obvious to my
children that they could put a lot more
bricks and pieces in with this method.
Since then, my kids have become
more enthusiastic about building and
now take better care of the bricks that
they own.
As parents, despite wanting to give
our kids everything, one of the
greatest gifts we can g