Raising Unspoiled Children in a Materialistic World

This time of year, most parents are worried about the deluge of "I want"s and "I need"s that begins to flow from the mouth of any child old enough to be impacted by commercial marketing. Most parents also sincerely do not wish to spoil their children. Yet saying "No" and practicing purchasing restraint around Christmas is tremendously difficult. We may complain about the state of our children's generation, their ingratitude, laziness, materialism and lack of good sense, but simultaneously our culture, our children, and probably our friends and relatives tell us that overabundance is absolutely necessary for the happiness and stability of our children. Beyond that, many of us attempt to fill a void we leave in our children due to work and general busy-ness with toys and TV. We know we cannot build relationships or alleviate our guilt by spoiling our kids, but we're tempted to try it anyway. What are we to do?

In reality, children's needs are very simple. They need love and care, first and foremost. They need our time and attention. They need basic food, shelter, and clothing. Children do not need one single bright and noisy plastic toy in order to achieve happiness. They do not need the latest video game. They do not need $30 t-shirts and $250 shoes. Contentment is a matter of training and the heart, not how much stuff one has.

You may be nodding your head along with me here. But you're probably think "Easier said than done", right? Well, if you have older children who've grown used to getting piles of stuff every year, if you want things to change, you will have a lot of work ahead of you. You will need to call a family meeting and discuss why and how this change is taking place. And you will most likely have to put up with whining, pouting and complaining from your previously spoiled children. They will have to see you living out these convictions yourself with self-denial, self-control, and self-restraint.

But if your children are still young, you're in luck! You can easily train little hearts and minds to contentment. A child who is not used to mind-numbing screen media or flashy toys will happily entertain himself with household objects, sticks, sand, dirt, plastic containers and siblings. You don't even have to go "no toy"-a good set of blocks, a simple "tool kit", a baby doll or two and many good books are wonderful replacements for that basketful of molded plastic junk that's been cluttering up your house. If you limit TV watching to videos only, you will buy yourself extra commercial-free years, and by the time your children realize there is a world of bright plastic out there just for them, they will be older and better able to understand your explanations of why "too much" is never really enough for anyone. They will also have experienced the pleasures of an uncluttered, unspoiled infancy and toddler hood and will be more likely to agree with you.

One of the best ways to teach your children contentment is to expose them to the fact that millions of people live in severe poverty, and to involve your children in various efforts to alleviate the suffering of such people. Because we are a Christian family, we tend to use Christian charities. We receive monthly newsletters from several organizations worldwide, with stories and photographs of the people these organizations serve. When we are able, we support such organizations as Compassion International, Samaritan's Purse, Angel Tree (and excellent choice for Christmas time) and the Salvation Army. Any of these would be excellent ways to show your children how very comfortable their own lives are and give them the opportunity to sow compassion and kindness into the lives of others. Put a map up on the wall so that when the news mentions difficulties in a country, you can point it out to your children and give them a sense of reality about life elsewhere. Your library will have books-which are often quite eye-opening-dedicated to life in specific countries. Have your children ever seen a mud hut, if only in a photo? Do they comprehend that many people are born and raised in such hovels? As "poor" as your living situation may be in America, it doesn't come close to the difficulties presented to those living in a hut or a slum-shack.

Older children can get even more involved in charitable work, if you're willing to take the time to help them do so. You can sign your family up to sort clothing at a Goodwill warehouse, help build a Habitat for Humanity house, ring a bell for the Salvation Army, or serve meals at a soup kitchen. You can make the rounds in a local nursing home bringing crafts, hugs, and smiles to lonely and forgotten people. You can look for individual families with needs and be "secret angels", leaving groceries or clothing or even a check on their porch with a kind note of encouragement attached. Sincere generosity begets contentment.

Around the holidays, when the pressure to buy stuff for the sake of buying stuff is highly increased, you may need to sit down with your children yet again to go over plans for a simpler holiday season. Ask for their input and ideas on how to make it fun without spending a lot of money or purchasing things that will be forgotten by New Years Day. If you love celebration, do simplified celebrations of Advent (which lasts the whole month of December) and include as much of the tradition and ceremony that you can. Create a Jesse Tree (also known as a Chrismon Tree) with your children to focus on the religious aspect of Christmas. Explore Christmas traditions around the world. Learn about other holidays that occur around this time of the year. Have a "secret angels" program in your own family, with each individual secretly doing kindnesses and creating little, thoughtful gifts for the person who's name they picked. Use an Advent calendar to count down the days to Christmas, and make time for Christmas stories and singing. Go sight-seeing and light-seeing. Attend the free concerts and Christmas programs that abound in the churches in your area. Cook together, clean together, decorate together, feast together. Who needs breakable, distracting, plastic "stuff" when you've spent an entire month loving, doing, and being together?

There is nothing wrong with giving and receiving gifts! Go for it! But this year make them thoughtful, useful and limited in amounts. Focus on the joy of giving and the reason for giving rather than who got what and how much. Learn to delight in the little things rather than mope because things weren't big enough or fancy enough or expensive enough. You can't tally love with a dollar sign, and you don't need to try. If you can take the time and make the effort to plant the seeds of contentment and gratitude in your children and nurture them through the years, you will be giving them a gift far greater and more useful than anything they will find under the Christmas tree!