HELP, I'M so sad-nmy lovely sensitive, creative 6.5 yo dd is becoming precocious and spoiled by trashy american popular culture and consumersism!

[noonar]

i want my dd back. for the last couple of months, and particularly since the school holidays began i have had a real battle with my once lovely dd1.

she has always been a really creative, kind child, who is sensitive towards the needs of others. we have often been told how emotionally intelligent she is, by teachers, friends and family. basically, she's a lovely girl.

however, she's recently started to be totally obsessed by the likes of high school musical, hannah montana, getting her ears pierced, claires accessories, magazines with free lip gloss etc. i should add that she hardly watches this stuff on tv, but its very much the 'in thing' at school. unfortunately, even tiny amounts of exposure to this crap is really having an impact on her(eg playing games with dd1 while speaking in ghastly american accents.) now, i realise that this is par for the course for many girls, but my dd seems to be soaking it up like a sponge- more than her friends are.

to add to this, since the holidays began, she just has not stopped asking for treats. she is continually asking for ice creams, sweets, magazines and other junk. i have tried to give her a reasonable amount of little treats so that she doesnt feel that i'm a complete meanie. i have tried giving her a nominal amount of pocket money, but she just pesters non stop to the shops to spend her money.

i try to do simple family activites like visiting country parks, the seafront or park and going on picnics. i avoid activites that are too commercial. also, she has lots of creative influences in her life, like pottery and violin lessons, but still, if there's tat in sight, my dd will gravitate towards it.

we went camping with a group of friends at the start of the hols, but my dd spent most of the weekend nagging to go to the gift shop.

we are off to italy on monday and i am so worried that the whole treat thing is going to get out of hand. i'm just dreading this aspect of the holiday, tbh.

i went ballistic with her yesterday, as she was rude and stroppy with her lovely dad when he got home. she has been loads better today, but i'd still be v grateful for any advice on how to curb my lovely dds new found precocious streak.

Message withdrawn

You see I think swearing has NO POWER if you don't react to it. Ds is nearly as tall as me now and wouldn't swear to make me cross or upset me, he just knows it has no power or currency. And as I said, MY MIL reacted when he said it and THAT'S why he tried it with me at 5.5.

Fks sake, does NOT make me a crap parent.
Or him a bad child.

A lot of non verbal adults with learning disabilities I work with come out with appalling language every once in a blue moon.

.

As salt, people always ask why. I tell them if they reacted so astoundingly to normal utterances like 'Tea please' with the same vigour, the person in question would have a lot more verbal language.

(I love the way cod always recommends

1. organised Mum diaries

2.How To Talk

She must get good commission )

My dd has shown signs of this ,noonar. Taking her shopping is tedious in the extreme - can I have/i want/pleeeeease! - all the way round. Having pocket money has helped (she has 50p p/wk, she is nearly 6) cos I say if you really want it, use your own money. I will sub her if she has saved for a few wks and still not got enough. But it continues.

On hoilday, we do the one treat a day thing - ice-cream/new tat from beach shop/sweets etc and NO MORE.

And she knows that if the item is something I don't approve of - HSM etc, Bratz and the like - she has to buy it herself. Needless to say, this has not yet happened. We went shopping for a new schoolbag today. She picked up HSM, hannah Montana and Bratz, but I said No, i'm not buying that, and she put them back with no argument. Ended up with a lovely non-branded one from M&S which she is delighted with.

Courage, friend, Courage!

Look, he isn't allowed/doesn't watch Eastenders, Casualty, any violent crap that many many children are exposed to. He doesn't know about horror news stories, he is a nice mostly well behaved boy (with exceptions eg homework), has good school reports, is kind to his sister and animals. He didn't hear it from me but actually, we randomly heard MUCH WORSE than that on the tube in London yesterfay and dd is 4. I can't stop them hearing what other people say. I doubt VERY much it came from me in that context at 5yo. If he'd have dropped something and said 'bollocks' now that might well have done.

www - I bet you were mortified! I remember when ds1's lovely friend taught him and dd every swear word under the sun, and then, having established that he MUST NOT say those words, and ONLY VERY SILLY people say them, and THEY DON'T MEAN ANYTHING ANYWAY, he waited till Sunday morning, and told the MINISTER at CHURCH that 'he knew the 'f' word' to which dd said 'He means fck'. So then ds1 very jubilantly said 'Dd said FCK in church'....

noonar - I think they all go through this. Dd is 5, hasn't seen HSM, but she and her pals were doing all the dances int he paddling pool at the local park last week. I do try and avoid adverts on the TV, just to preserve my sanity, because otherwise it would be 'I want this, I want that'. And ds1 who is 7 can be VILE - so self-orientated. But I think he will grow out of it. At dd's party yesterday I called him out of Musical Statues, he slammed the door and threw a fit in the kitchen, saying 'I was NOT moving, she is a LIAR, I'm going to WAIT till the end of the party and then GET HER, I HATE MUM'. But he is basically a nice boy!

I had trainee SW with me last month. She was so freaked when v quiet autistic woman walked past her and said 'Fuck off you cunt.'#I told her it was nowt personal.

totally agree about reacting to swearing being the biggest prob. however, 'shit' is the only no- no my dds know. they knew worse words as toddler but have bitten my tongue more in recent years when with them, and they seem to have forgotten them

All kids moan and whinge. Our job is not to respond. Mine are here in Bangladesh living like bleeding lords and dd continuously whingeing about a doll left behind in Wales.

Sorry noonar I seemed to get lots of people confused with my DD, but this thread has helped suggest some strategies for my DD too so thankyou for starting it.

Also in a strop as dopesn't have lilo/life sized dolphin and water guns to play in the pool.

moondog, that must be so hard to listen to, esp with lots of visible poverty on your door step.

keevamum

While agree whining is annoying I agree with cod re sneering at your children's tastes. I remember being a child and feeling that my tastes/choices were bad and had to be hidden if they were different to my parents' (intellectually rather snobby) choices/tastes and that was catastrophic for my confidence. It's perfectly OK for children to like pink sparkly things or Disney movies or plastic toys. They are children. If you said to a friend, 'I like this top' or 'I loved that film' and they said, 'That top? It's the crappiest, ugliest thing I've ever seen, chavvy and rubbish' or 'YOu liked that stupid film? It's moronic and boring' you'd feel, at least, rather put out, I'd guess, and you are an adult.
My children say, 'You love Space Pirates, don't you mummy' because they are a/making conversation b/sharing their tastes and c/hoping to find things in common with me. I say, 'You really enjoy it don't you? THe music is fun, isn't it? But my favourite is Charlie and Lola', rather than 'Are you insane? I'm an adult! I'd never watch that crap in my life given a choice' (even though that is obviously the truth )
Noonar, I think your daughter is rebelling against the pottery lessons! She'll be refusing lentils next

...as an addendum to my "conversation in John Lewis toy department post"....

We were touring several toy shops for DD to point out things she likes so I know what to get her for her birthday (she knows she won't get everything she points out but I said I wanted a good idea of the sort of things).
I do get annoyed at the total marketing pinkness at little girls. I don't like it.

DD would need major surgery to remove her opinion that pink equals perfection.

We clash over this opinion, she has hers, I have mine. I think it is important for her to know not everyone thinks the same thing.

I have since revisited the shop minus DD and bought one of these acursed pink Disney princess items which I despise and she so loves.

I imagine her surprise and joy on her birthday morning will be greater knowing that she knows my opinion on said items and absolutely will not be expecting it.

My strategem comes from this: I was once at a church fete with my parents, I was aged about 9, the local needlewoman had made 4 beautiful dolls with a selection of clothes for each. I was entranced by one particular one. I BEGGED my parents to buy me the doll. Mum says no, no, no, no money etc. After some time my dad turns up and says "we can't buy that doll anyway, someone else has bought it, it's been sold."
I was gutted. I asked Dad for another one of them and he said "oh no, that wouldn't be the same. Never mind."
Imagine my joy 3 months later on Christmas day to find the doll in my stocking. My dad bought it while I was wheedling my mum. I have never EVER forgotten it and I still have that dolly.

This is why I often tell my DD she can't have something. Sometimes it because I refuse to buy any more ludicrous tat, and sometimes it's because I'm a sneaky cow.

DD gets nice birthday presents, lots at Christmas and presents on holiday and when grand dad comes. I think that's enough. She stopped the whining when she realised we were serious.
Now we go out to places and go to the gift shop and she doesn't even ask most times. She generally gets a lollipop tho'!

Poor behaviour copied from peers: it's inevitable, but you have to take a stand, hard it is, but worth it in the end. You and your partner plus family must be united!

Yes it is Noonar, althoguh I am no hair shirted ascetic myself. But neither do I really expect my kids to understand what is going on when women holding malnourishe babies tap on our car windows at traffic lights.

gtod, just let her go with it - with some bounaries - it's a rite of passage for her. You will 'spoil' things not accepting her for who she is

I just bought that book -HTT - haven't got it yet. If anyone mentions god in it I'm not even going to give it away - it's going to landfill!

Noonar, does your dd have friends with older siblings?

Hopefully it's just a phase. My 8 yr old DS1 can be a bit the same. A few years ago when DS2 was born we went to Legoland for the weekend. We tried to pre empt the gift shop by saying that he could get something samll when we left (on the second day) (he does love Lego). We did allow him in as we arrived 'just to look'. However the whole weekend was completely spoilt by him saying 'are we going yet' every ten minutes. Unfortunately he doesn't like rides which doesn't help matters (they're alway too fast too high, too wet etc etc). It was quite clear that all he bothered about was going to the gift shop. He did tell him how disappointed we were with him. He was 5 at the time and he does seem to have improved slightly.

He now has pocket money (in excahnge for chores). That seems to be working well. He has computer consoles and I encourage him to save up and buy games for them. There have been a few interesting lessons learnt where he has spent his money on ' plastic tat' and then realsised that he now can't buy that computer game he really really wanted and the message seems to be getting through. It's strange how that must have piice of tat becomes slightly less desirable when you have to pay for it yourself!!!

I think it is probably a phase a lot of them go through. When we go out particularly in the holidays I give them clear expectations of what the rules are ie i will buy one small item from the gift shop or I will not be buying anything and if they want something they must buy it them selves. This does seem to be having an affect.

I think that the one-treat-a-day is a great rule on holiday. We always do this and it means only one dessert or ice cream per day.

In a two or three week holiday we might break the rule two or three times and have a two treat day - but the children know that this is an exception.

re sneering at children's tastes, its not soemthing that i'd ever, ever do. i do point out that somethings she wants eg free gifts on magazines are poor quality and not good value- but i do not sneer. (or was that comment also directed at migsie??)

migsie, i loved your dolly story reminds me of when my dad got the cafe lady to tell me the freezer had broken so all ice creams were free...found out years later he'd paid for the ices and told her to say that!

thanks for other posts/ advice, folks. however, i think that some points from my OP have been lost. my main concerns about my dd are to do with the compulsiveness, obsessiveness and reletlessness of her behaviour/ interests. i realise that we dont live in a vacuum and cant escape things american and pink altogether.

roboshua, your legoland story sounds so familiar! dd was like this on our camping trip- re gift shop and also incessantly wanting to open packs of biscuits etc every 2 minutes.

mercy, she picks up stuff from classmates with older siblings, i think. closest friends generally have younger sibs.

as far as rebelling against pottery etc goes, we're not too lentil weavy, i can assure you.

Toatally agree about not sneering at children's tastes. My parents were very vocal (particularly about my father). I remember being in Switzerland and they ahd agreed to buy me a little musical chalet box. My absolute favorite happended to paly 'Rain drops keep falling on my head'. My dad was very sneering about it being tourist rubbish and wanted me to get one which played a a traditional Swiss tune ( because that would of course make it less touristy!!!??). I stuck to my guns and got the one I wanted ( I wasn't bothered by the tune I just thought it was the prettiest one). I still have it but somehow it's always been tainted because of my dad's attittude and it always makes me feel a bit sad IYKWIM. Maybe I don't make sense but I have generally always felt nothing I ever did was quite good enough for my parents and that have always been slightly disappointed in me as they always seem to have looked down or sneered at my choices/achievements..

Having said that my DSs know I don't always like the same things as them and we do discuss why so they realise everyone has different tastes (eg Hated mr Bean's Holiday love Indiana Jones!!).