Most of the materials I’ve read or discussions I’ve seen on the topic of kids and commercialism are along the lines of “when I was growing up things were different.” I was tempted to say the same thing, but I don’t think that is entirely true. I think my generation was the beginning of a society that views children as little more than a target market.

We have always had television and while I remember getting cable and the Internet, I was still pretty young when it happened. Kids my age grew up on licensed characters and Nintendo. Two days a week our school hot lunch was served by Taco Bell or Pizza Hut, who also sponsored a reading program at my elementary school. I’ve been the target of advertisers since preschool and it is only getting worse.

Billions of advertising dollars are spent each year shilling everything from junk food to cheap plastic toys to kids who are not old enough to distinguish a lie from the truth. It’s pervasive. Everywhere a child looks there are advertisements, including in many cases at school.

The Center For a New American Dream has had some success in fighting a company that made radio advertisements for school buses. I can see the logic in it. Kids on a school bus are a captive audience with a limited ability to tell fact from fiction. I can just picture some evil-genius advertising executive salivating over that plan. What I can’t conceive of is the Superintendent of Schools who would agree to something so blatantly bad for children.

Can you tell that this bugs me?

The lines between who we are and what we buy have become blurred. We judge others and ourselves on whether or not we have what advertisers tell us we should have. We believe that “if I just had this one more thing” then I’d be happy or cool or beautiful.

I had parents who fought it, at least when we were young. They restricted how much TV we watched and we weren’t allowed to have a Nintendo. My mom was a preschool teacher and she always had some project for us like making wrapping paper out of butcher paper and potato stamps, or making a periscope from a milk carton and some mirrors. My dad took us to every historical site and museum in the states of Minnesota and Wisconsin. We were one of the last families at my school to get cable. We were allowed to have “cool” toys like My Little Pony or a Cabbage Patch Kid if my mom saw some creative value in it, but “I want it because everyone else has one” was never a useful argument.

Now that I am a parent I can appreciate how hard this is to fight. Right now my kids are little so I have a lot of control over what they see and do, but that won’t always be true. It’s a scary thing when you realize how much influence other people have over your children.

I have talked a lot with other moms about this issue. Many of us are feeling the same way. There’s a sense of desperation. “What do we do? Hide them under a rock for 18 years and hope for the best? Give in and admit defeat?”

I think the solution has to be two-fold. First, we have to teach our kids how to navigate this culture effectively. As tempting as the hide-them-under-a-rock idea sounds, that kind of isolation isn’t going to prepare them for the real world. The real world will hit them eventually. As a mom, protectiveness comes easily to me, but what I really need to do is to give my kids the tools they need to succeed when I am no longer there to protect them.

I need to teach them to evaluate their purchases against their wants, needs and values. I need to teach them to ask lots of questions. Do I want this because it would really improve my quality of life or do I want it because it is bright and shiny and right in front of me? Will it bring me real enjoyment, or just status? Can I picture myself pulling this out of the closet a year from now and I still interested in it or would I send it to a thrift shop? Am I buying this because I need a little novelty in my life? Could I meet that need by checking a book out from the library, creating a piece of art, or seeking out a new experience instead of a new possession? Can I learn to appreciate the beauty of an object without having to own it?

I need to be honest with them about my own struggles. I am a full-grown woman who knows that advertisers and businesses do not necessarily have my best interests at heart. Still, I sometimes walk into Target, feel my eyes start to glaze over, and suddenly feel that “if I just had this” life would be easier.

I need to help them keep their focus on what is important. There’s something about spending time together as a family, getting outside and playing or spending quiet time alone with a book that naturally makes bling look less appealing. The more you appreciate what really matters to you the more contented you are. The more contented you are the less you are likely to believe that you “have to” have something just because someone tells you that you do.

The second thing concerned parents need to do is to find each other and speak up. There are probably other parents in our communities who feel this way. By speaking up we make it easier for others to speak up, and the more of us there are the more effective we can be. These are our communities and our children. We do not have to accept the status quo.

In another Sunny Way article Megan said that we are “the environment.” We are also “society” and any change in society is going to have to come from us.