Thursday, September 9, 2010

Six year olds

My Girl is 6. She will be 7 very shortly. The never ending list of things she wants for her birthday keeps getting brought up over dinner. Like I could ever forget it...dolls, razor scooter thingy, zhu zhu pets (yikes?), a four wheeler, the Barbie doll that's a mermaid, some clothes, and pink streaks in her hair are constants. Every now and then she throws something else in there that some kid on the bus had, but for the most part those are the gifts at the top of her list. So here's my thing, I don't feel that a lot of these are worth wasting my money on. A four wheeler is just out of the question because I don't have an extra 600-1000 bucks to drop on her, the zhu zhu pets are just ridiculous, and the Barbie...well let's just say me and Barbie don't get along so well. My Bitter Little Man thinks I'm bitter and stingy about gift giving, but it's really just that I don't want a bunch of crap around my house that's just gonna get chewed by the dog or I'm going to end up picking up 10,000 times a day. Does that make me a bad mom? Maybe it's because I was brought up in a very poor household with 4 children and when it came to birthdays or Christmas is was always very simple. We got one big gift and then usually some little items that we could use (shampoo, conditioner, pens, pencils etc...). There was a lot of sacrificing and compromising. I just feel like even though my husband and I are better off than my parents were it doesn't mean we should just give in to our daughter's every little wish. How will she ever truly appreciate anything? I've been trying to figure out ways to help her appreciate the things we do provide for her. So far...it's not working. How do you get a 6 year old to understand and appreciate what she has? Maybe I'm expecting too much...

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