You know this "all children need is love" stuff? Apparently it's all balls.

[HecateGoddessOfTheNight]

and they actually ARE unhappy without material goods

Mine are certainly screwed then.

Although there's stuff on there about quality time, much of it involves the handing over of cash.

Are we raising a generation of people with pound signs in their eyes?

As if we didn't have enough to feel guilty about, now we are told we are making our children miserable if we can't buy them enough stuff!

Actually, there's someone out there worse (from the last time we played this game) but I forget who.

Perceived poverty. I think dh has this problem. We have a nice house, I don't need to work and we can afford to have 3 children. But his brother has a lot more money and certainly likes to spend it, so he thinks we're poor!!!

I shall teach me kids to look more widely than their peer group at school and hope that helps them learn. If not, we shall go on holiday to India a few times.

You win. I surrender.

(Better start saving for trip to India)

Merry- my dc have been to India a few times and stayed with familkies etc, plus other very poor countries. It doesn't help in the playground, sadly!

:( for Hully in her uniform. Cruel, that was.

One of our best holidays was a week in a caravan in Aboyne that cost £30 a week and we had to go into the lady's house to use the loo.

Great holidays are for kids being away from home and spending all day with their parents.

Not 5* hotels and being parked in a kids club every day.

Tortoise: don't exaggerate. It was only MmeLindor, that notorious DM reader, going on about hols in the sun.

I can see this descending into

"Caravans in Aboyne? You were posh. Our best holiday was camping in Ireland. In the RAIN. With dancing leprechauns stealing our lunch"

Pen
Our holidays in the sun are in Scotland. Or staying at home in Geneva and going to the beach. Cheap as chips.

Like that Billy Connolly sketch about Scottish children on "holiday" at Leith, in the rain, looking like refugees.

I don't actually know if DS would be happier if we had a garden., but I know I would be as I could then put him in it with the cats to supervise him, and get some peace

Before any ARA try to kill me, we are getting a garden in 4 months so the cats will then be free range, not battery.

Having dragged our dc all over the shop since they were tiny, all they want to do is stay home.

Barstards.

Ha ha @ sun in Scotland. Now I know you're pulling my leg!

Take me right back to my dysfunctional upbringing where my parents bought me a 'World of Beauty' instead of a Girls World and a 'Chipper' instead of a Chopper - I mean FFS. It's a wonder I am functioning member of society on any level really.

Mme - lunch? you could afford lunch? The leprechauns had to feed us

Pen
Was just over the wa'er in Dundee. We do have sun there sometimes.

Hully
My DC wail when we go somewhere. Why can't we just stay hooooooooooome.

My dad is in ScumDundee, and there hasn't been sun there since 1952. Fact.

OI.

Less of the scum, if you DON'T mind.

It is a lovely town.

Now. Used to be quite minging

I had to dig out some childhood holiday pics the other day. Holidays spent on English beaches all day. Everyone is blue.

God, it's all coming back....
I was never allowed to want things. Dad had had a puritanical (small p) upbringing and just sneered at me if I expressed any wish that was too lofty. I mentioned the umbrella on this thread. What actually happened was that before my 13th birthday, he asked me if I'd like something really good for my birthday, like...how about...an umbrella. And then that's what I got, because I couldn't show that it was actually quite a crap present (not to mention utilitarian). I went off and cried and cried because I was only worth an umbrella and I'd have to say to my friends 'oh we don't really do birthdays in our family' (incidentally brother got a bespoke BMX that year).

I can sort of laugh about it now but I was so so so upset. And I'm not a materialistic person, I never was. I hated being called that when I didn't ask for or want much really.

Oh god I've dragged the thread down, sorry!

Deffo. I think it is significant that the most important cultural landmark is a memorial to people Who Froze To Death.

Mme - lunch? you could afford lunch? The leprechauns had to feed us

I had to eat the leprachaun

Oh Prune

and they say it's character building. It's not, it's evil and destructive

Those sneering at the personal music player in the list. Did you never have a cassette player as a kid? Sony Walkman was the coveted item when I was growing up - seems formats may change but otherwise stay the same. Music was a really big deal to me as a tween/teen. I really don't see that being included in the list as being that shocking, tbh.