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Made a deal with Jr last night, that for every £ he makes working for someone not in the family, I'll add 50p. Bit like a working tax credit to bring his earnings up to the living wage of an aspiring Xbox One owner 🙂 Maybe Gordon was on to something.
We have started making our girls sell old toys they no longer play with so they can buy things they do want. It would work really well but for the shonky and unreliable nature of people 'buying' from Facebook 'Local For Sale' pages. For every person we have had buy something, we have had another 3 or 4 people not turn up to collect.
ti_pin_man - Member
every generation says the same shite, get over yourselves.
🙂
I remember hearing all the "kids have so many toys these days, what happened to being happy with a single wooden block and a bit of imagination?" moans from relatives when I was a kid. A few years later everyone was moaning about how all the toys needed batteries. It's going to continue for as long as (certain) things keep getting cheaper and technology advances. Plus ça change.
We discussed something similar recently. I think that often it boils down to "we didn't have that" presented as a sign of impoverishment when often it's that "that" hadn't been invented yet. I didn't know how lucky I was to have three television channels to choose from, apparently.
More relevant to the previous discussion, there's fear and resentment over the unknown. What will exposure to iDevices and the like do to impressionable young minds long-term? We don't know because in and of itself tablets and phones haven't been out long enough to find out. But I'll wager it'll be the same as video games, television, rock music, radio, books, and everything else that's been the cause-du-jour of the problems with the youth of today ever since some hippy in the Middle East got himself nailed to a tree.
When my 13 yo son wants something expensive we (mostly me) have a long chat about the real value of stuff and whether he needs something or wants something and then we reach a compromise. Last Christmas he wanted some Beats headphones. I flat out refused to get them. He found some cheap ones on eBay so we had a chat about the often false economy of buying cheap ie knocked off gear. We then had a conversation about consumerism and how he might as well strap a couple of adverts to the side off his head and fashion over function. I offered to take him to a proper hi-fi shop if he wanted good quality headphones but it turned out quality wasn't that important. So we compromised and he got some Beats ear buds instead and he also got some Sony headphones with Christmas money. He's good though, we spend a small fortune on him because he dives but he works hard at it and is getting some good results and he appreciates the sacrifice we make, most of the time anyway.