ExchangeEveryDay Past Issues

I agree and am saddened by these ideas. Unfortunately, the "rash of debt" by the time they graduate from college may or may not be related to an excessive and materialistic lifestyle. As an early childhood teacher, I have never made an excessive wage. My own children were raised with many positive experiences, affluence was not one of them. My children will be saddled with debts and student loans, simply from the cost of their college education.

I find this one interesting, but I wonder if it is just the advertising we need to worry about, or if it is more just our affluence. We have so many choices and the potential to acquire so much. Many of us have the ability to have much more than we need, whether due to lots of cash, or to credit card or loan access, to having things given to us, or even to finding things in our neighborhoods or dumps on trash day, or even on freecycle! You don't have to watch tv to be awash in stuff or to become materialistic these days.

My daughter, for example, has over twenty barbie dolls and a huge box of accessories. This collection started when my neighbor moved and left a huge pile of things on the sidewalk, including an old trunk full of barbie doll things. The collection grew each time one of Isabel's older friends outgrew her barbie's and passed a big box of things down to her. Then, to increase the diversity of the nearly all blond collection, I let Isabel buy some barbies with brown skin and/or dark hair and some male dolls from yard sales and thrift stores. She bought two with Christmas money from her grandfather and her grandmother, brother, and I each bought her one for a birthday gift different years. In spite of giving away dolls and accessories to younger girls and thrift stores, the collection is enormous, including a not very sturdy, but big enough plastic house, a plastic coach with horse, a huge pink sports car, a motorcycle, many clothes, shoes, dishes, furniture, and baby things. We didn't need to be wealthy, to spend a lot of money, or to see one single barbie advertisement to end up with this collection. In fact, if Isabel had wanted, and if we had the room in our house, she could have just played with the collection of barbie's my mother saved from my childhood, part of which was given to my sister and me by our older cousins. The toy wealth just accumulates. As it stands, my daughter plays with the previous generation's collection at Grandma's house.

I have been thinking about clearing out my family day care in some way (which is in a separate part of the house and is still barbie free:), but even knowing what to do with all the stuff is hard. My day care partner worked in a friend's program and noticed that there seemed to be less stuff. We have both found the aesthetic in Waldorf and Reggio classrooms appealing, but it is just not my natural tendency to be clutter free. I am a bit of a stuff magnet. Like my daughter, I find stuff just comes to me, whether from other providers who are closing their programs, from families who have outgrown things, or from walks around the neighborhood on trash and moving day. When I first opened my program, I frequented clearance aisles, yard sales, thrift stores, used book stores, and store closings. I no longer order supplies or shop for much other than disposable items like hand soap and food, but our program is chock full of stuff. I have given away loads to other providers and thrift stores, do regular porch clothing and toy giveaways and exchanges for day care families, and have donated all our riding toys and many sand toys to the park. I would love to read an article in Exchange about how child care programs and providers wean themselves of too much stuff, how they find homes for it or just choose to put it in the trash, how it feels to both give it up and to live without it. This is not only a problem in our homes, but also in our early childhood programs. We need to find ways for our children to grow up loving themselves and each other, finding what they love to do, and learning how to handle the sea of things they are bound to float along in.