Toys vs. Time

Various gift-giving holidays are coming and parents are starting to freak out about trying to find the ‘perfect’ toy for their kids.  Every year, there is some hot item that stores can’t seem to keep in stock.  Parents go to stores at 6am, before a full day of work, they wait in lines at Midnight Madness sales to gain access to that special item, and mild-mannered Girl Scout leaders turn Toys R Us into WWE Raw cage match fights, trying to get that one, last, coveted item so their lovely little princesses can have the perfect holiday morning to wake and see that thing that will make them better than all the other children at school.  Wait a minute, folks, what has gotten into us?

Gifts and toys are great, and kids certainly do want them and they ask for them and they may even beg and plead for them, but toys do NOT make the holidays.  I can prove it.  Think now of your own childhood and try to remember the 3 or 4 most special holiday experiences you can recall.  Perhaps one of them may include a special gift, but my guess is that your most special memories are solidly tied to TIME, not TOYS.  That is, the years that your parents spent time doing something very special with you are the ones that you remember, not the ones in which you got a $29 item that broke six months later.

Children remember baking sugar cookies and using food coloring to make every color of frosting imaginable and painting each cookie for an hour, in 7 different colors, with 3 different kinds of colored sugars, sprinkles, and candy balls to accent the angel’s wings, the snowman’s buttons, or the fur trim on Santa’s coat.  Children remember the time dad went outside with them for 3 hours and built a snow castle, a snow horse, and a snow slide that could even hold him.  Kids remember when the family made two holiday dinners and took one over to a neighbor whose father had just lost his job.  They remember the joy and gratitude on the faces of the recipient family and the meal they shared in the other family’s home.

Children look back, with great fondness, to the year that everyone, including the adults, wore pajamas over to Grandma’s house for Christmas dinner.  They remember seeing the grown-ups having fun and being child-like and enjoying the holiday and they remember the experience of feeling like one gigantic family, all celebrating together in their sleepy clothes.  Children will fondly speak of how each of them received the same homemade tree ornament every year and how, when they left home, they were able to leave with two dozen ornaments with which to decorate their first tree alone, knowing that their siblings had an identical set on their own first trees as well.

That’s what kids remember, not the X-Box version of Street Punk Fighters IV with special Explodo-Punch action.  So, this holiday season, as you find yourself sandwiched between 200 other sleep-deprived, agitated parents in line for the Limited Release 2007 Hot Wheels Mini Cooper, ask yourself if that is really the sort of memory you want to build for yourself and your family or if there’s something a little more meaningful you might be able to do instead.  Your time will be remembered long after the toy is gone.

Marlo Archer, Ph.D.
Down to Earth Enterprises
1250 E. Baseline Rd., Suite 102
Tempe, AZ 85283
(480) 705-5007