I've got a 4 year old and a 7 year old and I am just done with Christmas.
They are both going off their heads, and have been for weeks, about "toys"
"Santa's going to bring me a toy, yay!!"
They have such high expectations and they are just shit.
Currently home with the kids trying to get the house ready for Christmas. Tidying their rooms and I'm chucking out old toys that are either broken, or just never played with. Packaging them up for charity shop to make way for new, shite toys that will be arriving tomorrow.
Some of them I just wince when they are presented by well meaning relatives.
Despite how it sounds, I am not a total killjoy. Kinetic sand for example. It's messy, it gets everywhere, but kids enjoy it, so I'm all for it. It's easy, it does what it says on the tin, kids are happy, all good.
But so many of these toys / crafts require so much adult input and I just feel like launching them back at people when they buy them.
"Dinosaur plaster of Paris make your own fridge magnets" Fuck off. Who the fck has the time to do this? And the kids don't enjoy it, because a) they are too young to really do any of the plaster of Paris stuff so just have to watch which is boring for them; b) there is no instant gratification, they don't want to wait while it dries, and c) most sets are such cheap crap that they never work, and the supplied paints are less than useless.
I was brought up early to mid 80s and there's no way my parents played with me as much as kids these days seem to expect.
I don't even know who / what I'm whinging at. Everyone and everything, really.
I hate that my youngest pulls out every single "toy" and flits between them and just leaves a wave of destruction for me to clean up.
I hate that my kids are so bad at playing independently and have to involve me in everything when I just don't have time for it (before I get criticised for being a bad parent, I do play with them. Loads. We go to the park loads etc. I play games with them at home. I just don't have the time to play games / crafts or whatever that require set up time, playing time, and excessive clearing away).
I hate bloody annoying relatives that buy these stupid toys / games that the kids will badger me to do that I just don't have the time for.
I hate the money grabbing toy companies. I got my kids an Argos catalogue to flick through like I used to do. Some things they started going nuts for and once glance was enough to tell me it was a pile of overpriced shite that was verging on false advertising and knew they would not be happy with. Like the "flying" My Little Pony I desperately wanted aged 5 that was a steaming pile of shite and, needless to say, didn't fly.
Just fed up of it. I used to love Christmas, but all these "toys" are just sucking the life out of me.