June 2010
My 4 year old son suddenly decided that the Treehouse channel is for babies. He is way too mature for those shows now and prefers watching Sonic X and Pokemon.
Unfortunately these shows are not available on commercial free TV stations, nor can I fast-forward the commercials. And he loves the commercials. I guess kids like commercials because they are like short TV shows for all the latest new toys. Once he has previewed them, he asks incessantly for each and every toy he saw on TV.
The first time he asked for a toy he saw on television I told him that “no, we are not buying that toy”. He broke down in tears and sobbed. Not getting something he wanted is a difficult concept for him to absorb. Imagine the tragedy of being introduced to a world of fun and flashing toys but told he could not play with them?
The next time, I tried to reason with him, and explain that we can’t always have all the toys we see on the commercials. That did not work either, it just led to more whining.
I then tried a different, more positive approach. When Evan asked me to buy a particular toy, I said “I would LOVE to buy it for you, sweetie, but we just can’t, even though I really want you to have it.”
I don’t know why, but this approach actually worked for some strange reason. Ultimately it got exhausting being so positive so I just fell back to the parental standby of ignoring him. Or telling him to remind me about it at Christmas/birthday time. I figure if it’s something he really, really wants, he will remember.
However, I have recently discovered a very cool website called “A Toy A Day“. This website is so fantastic I use it on a regular basis. It features paper cut outs of pretty much every television, movie and superhero character you can imagine.
This morning Evan was talking about getting a Pikachu toy (from Pokemon) and I figured I would check the website. Lo and behold, there was a Pikachu toy cutout!
It is a great little crafty activity we can do together, it makes me a hero in my son’s eyes and satisfies his desire for a new toy.
And he really enjoys them. He loves them so much that he took the Sonic X cutout to school for show and tell and slept with it for days until it disintegrated. It was after all, paper. 🙂
-Melissa
