Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Marketing to Babies and Toddlers

We were, once again, very kindly gifted a number of hand-me-down clothes for The Bean.  I love this because not only is the life of these (perfectly fine) clothes extended, but it also saves us some money.  Kids' clothes aren't cheap!  Especially if you consider most of them only get a season or two of wear. 

I'm certainly not going to turn down generous pass-alongs like the ones we just received, but something I've noticed before struck me again with this batch, which was the number of "characters" depicted on them. 


As I'm sure I've mentioned before, The Bean watches next to no television.  I know he sees an occassional video on rainy days at daycare, sat on Grandpa's lap watching golf while we were in PA, and will stare intentely at the Julia Child DVDs when we're double checking how to prepare artichokes, but screen time is something we conscientiously try to avoid with him.  While at times it would be lovely to have a 20 minute break while the TV babysat for us, we know it's of no benefit to him, and worse, has shown to be detrimental. 

That said, of his 50 or so words, one of them is "Thomas".  Like many toddlers, The Bean loves vehicles, and I'm sure the word Thomas is something he picked up while playing with friends at daycare or at the drop-in centre rather than from a TV show, but still, it made me cringe a little when he was able to identify what we normally refer to as "the blue train" by name. 

It doesn't bother me when he calls his baby doll Jean Luc because I know he is never going to see a Jean Luc t-shirt in the store and beg me for it, or a Jean Luc book, or fruit snacks with Jean Luc on them.  With the beloved blue train, I cannot be so sure. 

So, when folding and putting away this newest batch of hand-me-downs I thought about whether we should keep the Thomas, Cars, Elmo or Spiderman ones.  Will having these characters' images plastered across his torso make him favour other items brandishing their faces?  Is this even something we can avoid, or will he end up favouring these items marketed to the youngest subset of society anyway?  How young is too young to start thinking about media awareness? 

I know that these characters are not something we can avoid, but we have to decide to what extent we will allow their presence in our lives. I do think that with many of them the programming around them holds lessons that can be of value. 

To be honest, it's not just the characters that get to me.  I'm not thrilled with the idea of my child being a walking advertisment for Gap while wearing their logoed hoodie either.  But he has a Gap hoodie and I still put him in it.  It's warm and cozy and it looks cute on him.   

It's hard to know where to draw the line. 

I want to be able to read him a Curious George book without him wanting us to buy him the Curious George doll.  Or Harry Potter without needing a wand, or iPad app, or all the DVDs (although, admittedly, I would like those for myself).   


I want him to be able to take a toy, character or not, and use his imagination to make up his own voice and story for it, rather than feeling like he needs to rehearse a prescribed script based on a show he's seen.  My heartfelt belief is that the best toys for children are the ones that lie there until the child makes something out of them.  Blocks.  Playsilks.  Sand.  While we have many toys that encourge imaginative and creative play, truly open-ended toys only make up a small fraction of The Bean's collection. 

I'm compelled to start looking at organizations like Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood to gain furthur insight on this issue.   What about you guys, do any of you think about this when buying your kids stuff, and if so, what are your thoughts?

29 comments:

  1. Um....isn't there anything else you want to share with us this morning!??!

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  2. I have a different belief about TV. Maybe it's because I work in the TV industry and do research for a ton of preschool shows, but nowadays, in my opinion, TV in normal amounts and parent-supervised can be a great educational tool. (I learn tons of stuff reading my scripts for work. LOL.) There are a ton of good, educational preschool shows out there. TV time in our house is also limited to half an hour when they wake up and half an hour before bed. They get more at grandparents' houses and at times we will let them watch a show for a while during the day. We also have movie night on Fridays. But we do try to keep it to a reasonable amount, and 98% of their TV viewing is done with us, not by themselves.

    Erik is getting into older shows now, the ones on Teletoon, but his viewing of them is very limited. He's allowed to watch a show from that channel once in a while when Ian isn't here, and only if it's one I'm familiar with. (I'm familiar with a lot of them through my work.) Almost all of our TV viewing here is still Treehouse and Disney Jr. and at 5.5 Erik still loves those shows.

    You are right about merchandising, it can get a little crazy. But yes, the Bean will absolutely have an opinion about what he wants to wear eventually. He will develop a love of some show or character and he will want everything he sees. (Not that you have to give in, of course.) Erik wears superhero /Lego/Star Wars shirts 80% of the time. We let him because we want him to have the choice of what he wants to wear and to be able to express himself that way. That's something he can be in control of to a certain extent and it makes him feel good to get to choose his own clothes. (Although most of them come from his grandparents.)

    Those Elmo jammies in the picture were Ian's favourite jammies for a while. :)

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    1. Thanks for your comment, Shannon.

      I hope I didn't offend you at all. I'm not anti-TV, but I do take the "no TV before age two" advisory fairly seriously. I would agree that there is a lot of good programming out there for children these days. I've watched a lot of TVOKids while babysitting and think it's pretty great.

      I also really appreciated the insight on letting kids pick out their own clothes. The Bean doesn't seem to care what we put him in at this age, but I'm sure at some point he will. Having clothes of his choice (character or otherwise) is a nice way to offer some freedom of expression.

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    2. No, don't worry, not offended at all. We also didn't do much TV before age 2 with either of the kids, mostly because neither of them cared about it. Erik was a very busy toddler and I can remember just wishing he would sit still for 10 minutes and watch TV so we could have a break, but he wouldn't until he was a bit older. (Now he LOVES TV and would watch all day if we let him.) Ian still has a short attention span for TV most of the time. He watches for about 15 minutes and then usually gets bored. In the mornings we insist that he watch for half an hour so we can snooze because he gets up so damn early! lol

      And I do agree that merchandising to children is out of control for some brands and shows, but I don't feel like our kids beg for that type of thing. Erik does have a lot of shirts with characters but he doesn't really ask for them, most of them were given to him by grandparents and hand-me-downs from our neighbour's son. He does love them but he doesn't seem to ask for that type of thing when we're out. His big addiction is Lego, but even that, he just wants to look at it when we go to the store. He doesn't insist on having it or have temper tantrums. He's quite content just to look and to plan when he can ask for it, like his birthday and Christmas. Lately we've been letting him buy a few things he wants with his own money and he's been very good about understanding if he doesn't have enough for a certain thing.

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  3. BTW, what about the ultrasound? I'm dying for details! lol

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  4. and to post responsively...

    ours generally watch one episode of tv per day. we turn on either Sesame Street or Clifford after dinner while we are cycling the kids through the bath and getting PJs on. it's the part of the day when we parents are most tired and the kids are most irritable and likely to pound on one another, so it's a good way to keep things calm while we get through a necessary routine.

    we were very anti-TV for a long time, Bird really didn't watch any before age 2. of course, the babies saw it earlier because Bird was watching. it's interesting, i do see Bird picking up some good things - like vocabulary words from Sesame Street (she told me something was "fascinating" the other day after "fascinating" was the Word of the Day on SS) and she washes her hands repeating a little routine she also saw on SS.

    as for purchasing stuff, she has the whole cast of Sesame Street in plush toys. they are all in her bed and i hear her singing and talking to them all of the time. she plays with them imaginatively though and absolutely LOVES them - she never goes anywhere without Big Bird.

    so, that's where we are. i think in general its good to limit the commercial stuff and TV exposure, but we've gotten a bit more relaxed with it than we were initially.

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    1. I imagine we'll relax a bit with it after having #2. For now The Bean doesn't really seem interested, which makes it easier. There are times, like during the after-diner clean up, where it would make things easier, but for now we have a good routine of trading off on clean up and childcare (which I fully recognize would be much more difficult with three!).

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  5. Our girls don't watch TV either. In the mornings, I will sometimes have the news on as background noise but they rarely watch it. I already know that I will absolutely not be one of those parents who buys kids whatever they want. I think that advertising to children is very tough to avoid because it is not just found in commercials. Since it will always be there, I will probably try to use it as a learning experience if/when they being it up (and start asking for toys!).
    Btw, I remember you writing about toys that inspire creativity (ie. wooden toys, blocks etc). I really took it to heart. We've tried our best to not buy too many flashy toys. Interestingly, the girls seem to gravitate towards blocks or a ball or their books (although don't get me wrong, they love a good loud-music-playing, lights flashing FP toy!).

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    1. We certainly don't intend to buy the kids whatever they ask for either! I know from being around kids how the "wants" can get them though. It can really be quite tiring to listen to and I've often been glad that I was not the one they were trying to wear down!

      The Bean loves books still, but is very much into flashy toys as well. I'm wondering if some musical instruments would provide the same cause and effect reactions he seems to enjoy so much with all the button pushing and whatnot.

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    2. The girls LOVE music. We did a music class and the instruments were a big hit. I found mini maracas at Coles a while back. They love them. The other TV exception is 1-2 Sesame Street 'Singing With The Stars' videos. They are only about 3 minutes long. I'll put them on my laptop at the end of one of their meals. They will now bop to the music and wave their hands!

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  6. Yes I think of this stuff. We avoid letting our 11 month old watch TV and do not give her toys or clothes with licensed characters on them. But I don't know how long it will last. I am especially afraid of the princess phenomenon. It's OK to dress up as a fairy or princess as long as you can dress as a firefighter or doctor too sometimes and as long as you don't have to be a DISNEY princess. But the older kids get the less parents have control over their influences so we'll see...

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    1. The Disney Princess thing can get pretty crazy, can't it? I remember one year in my PK class EVERY girl dressed up as a Disney princess for Halloween.

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  7. Like Shannon, I am speaking from the viewpoint of having an older child (Little Monster is inching toward 3!) and in the beginning we too restricted TV viewing and the vast merchandise market that goes with it. Eventually though, we discovered unless we planned on keeping him in the house 24-7 until he hit college age that, whether we liked it or not, he was going to get exposed to it. He has always LOVED trains and we steered clear of Thomas for as long as we possibly could but when he is seeing his friends at swim class, art class, and play groups playing with these seemingly awesome trains with the funny faces, it only makes sense that he picked up on it. A year later, our house is now home to SEVERAL of Thomas and his friends and I will admit that we just recently purchased a Thomas.Train table that we found on sale for a great price for his birthday gift in December. He does get to watch some TV (Limited time of maybe 90 minutes a day and only Thomas, Mickey, or Little.Einsteins) but I have noticed that this does not take away from his imagination or creative play, honestly I think it enhances it because he now builds massive cities and roads for his trains and cars and makes them do things that I have never seen on the shows that he could be mimicking. As for the clothing, once again, we steered clear as long as we could, but gradually he started expressing his OWN opinion (funny how that happens around age 2) and wants and as Shannon mentioned, he gets great pride and it encourages independence from selecting his own clothes (that now have a few characters in the mix) and he for sure wants to wear what he wants to wear and the majority of the time we allow it. I understand the desire to shield Bean, not get sucked into, the blatant marketing but alas I think it is a futile fight and I never ever thought I would be THE MOM saying that :(

    PS-I love Bean's GAP hoodie, but then again LM has them too ;)

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    1. I'm so glad to hear that both you and Sarah have found your kids playing creatively with the licenced toys. I hope the same holds true for The Bean. (We've also got a train/duplo table hidden away for Christmas/Birthday. It was too good a deal to pass up, knowing how much enjoyment he'll get out of it.)

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  8. Curly only watches about an hour or so of tv a week (that's usually a half hour show or two on weekends). He asks for it more, but we can usually get him to play with toys instead. We're not super anti-tv or anything, it's just that he turns into a zombie while watching it...even the shows where your kid is supposed to interact he just sits there silently (despite encouragement from us), so that makes us not like it much. It hasn't hit him yet that everything he sees on tv, he can find merchandise for in stores. We do have a Thomas train, an Elmo doll, and a couple other things. We definitely don't want to go overboard with buying stuff like that, and I'm pretty sure we'll continue to hold our ground for the most part in the future...we'll see!

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    1. I'm sure that at some point I'll be fine with limited TV watching too. In fact, I'll probably welcome it! Everything in moderation, right?

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  9. All I know is that months before our bean had ever seen an Elmo video, he fell In Love with the Elmo doll he has -- hardly his only stuffed toy, but the first one he adored. I loathe Elmo. Kids these days!

    We watch Sessame street on YouTube, and I don't think there's much wrong with it, besides that I am annoyed if the bean begs for it. We don't watch every day, but some weeks we do. And I know the official story is that they don't get language development from video, but I am sure that's where he's picked up the strings of alphabet letters he recites around the house....

    My real problem with the branded clothing is that it's mostly so damn ugly.

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    1. Your last comment made me laugh out loud. I agree 100%... though that Piglet costume in the photo we have is pretty frickin' cute. (It was The Bean's first Halloween costume.)

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  10. We held off on any TV until Monkey was 1 and a half and only broke it because he was up sick in the night and was inconsolable. We put on Nick Jr. and he stopped crying. The rest is history :) Actually we do limit his viewing - he watches most in the mornings because he is an early riser (4:30 the other morning -groan) and we just need a bit of a crutch. We do pick what he watches and don't just turn on Nick Jr. and let him sit mindlessly in front of it.

    In terms of the clothes and the "stuff," we don't do many branded clothes mainly because we also think it's mostly hideous. But Monkey does have a really cute Cars shirt (he loves Cars and we bought it at Disneyland) and an Elmo shirt from the Sesame Street Live show we went to. We have a TON of Thomas trains, mainly because my wife thinks they're adorable and loves building the train tracks with him. She is a collector, so it's gonna be hard to limit. Ultimately I think good parenting is key - moderation and discussions about media, advertising, etc. Once the kids are old enough to "get" it, they will want it.

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  11. Dora, Blues Clues, Arthur, Clifford, Electric Company, Sesame Street, Elmos's World, Caillou, Maya and Miguel, Between The Lions, Handy Manny, Wishbone. No Sponge Bob, no Nickleodeon at all. I have always told my girls (twins, now 12 years old) that if there is nothing to be learned from it, they are not allowed watch it. To this day, they will not watch Sponge-Bob; they do not like it.
    You cannot go wrong with PBSKids, Nick Jr and some Disney Channel.

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    1. I LOATHE Sponge Bob. Really, how does that crap get on the air?

      Thanks for the other network suggestions though, we'll have to keep those in mind for when The Bean does start watching shows.

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  12. We are media free here. No Tv in the house at all. I really do not like the character stuff so we don't buy it. Most of our stuff we get for the boys comes to us as gifts, or second hand and anything with a character on it goes into the donation pile to be used by someone else. That might seem rude, but like you, I do not want my child to be a walking advertisement. They do know Thomas, because we read the Classic Thomas Railway series. We actually have some of the original cloth bound ones from England that were my brother in laws when we was a kid. they are fantastic stories. The media today tries to turn children into consumers at such a young age it is disgusting. I think advertising to children should be banned. Sorry for the rant, but this is a hot button with me :)

    Jennifer @ Dark Blue Dragon

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    1. I really appreciate the input, Jennifer. I'm glad to see I'm not the only person who thinks about these issues! Jen and I have toyed with the idea of getting rid of the TV altogether, but we both love watching a show in the evenings, so I think we'll selfishly keep it.

      You do such wonderful and creative activities with your boys. They're lucky to live so close to nature and to have a mama who nurtures that connection. Even though our environment is different, I really hope he grows up feeling connected to the natural world and also interested in expressing himself creatively. IMO TV usually takes away from those things rather than enhancing them (though there are some good shows like ArtStarts which do try to encourage it).

      Thanks for sharing your perspective. It's fantastic that you're able to hold so true to your values.

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  13. We are pretty relaxed about tv. We don't watch it all day but the older two get to pick shows from a variety of fun shows. Not just educational. They aren't hung up on getting gear from shows but as tv loving folks, they get enjoyment from watching some shows. It gives them some down time when needed since they don't nap. My wife works in tv too so perhaps we look at differently as Shannon stated.

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    1. Thanks for your feedback, Stacey. I wonder if in general people who work in the industry are more accepting of media presence in their lives. I wouldn't be surprised...

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  14. This is SUCH a great post! We didn't allow TV until L was about 2 either, other than Baby Signing Time (and he signed and spoke early, so I'm a big fan!). Now he gets one episode of Mickey Mouse or SuperWhy after dinner before bed and we watch it with him and talk about what's going on. He has learned stuff from the shows (like the 3 dimensional shapes and some vocab) but I have no misconceptions about TV being educational (or more educational than parent interaction and play).

    As for merchandise, because we don't foster it, L doesn't really care if he has Mickey on his shirt or not. He did, however, know about many characters (like Dora) from books we had as hand-me-downs before he started watching TV... and he did ask for Dora undies as his first set.

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    1. Thank you! (I wasn't sure about posting it, as I didn't want to get peoples' backs up, but I think it's opened up some really intersting discussions so far.)

      Is Baby Signing Time the one created by the woman who has a daughter who is deaf? If so, we watched a little bit of it with my students this year and I also thought it was really well done. (The kids loved it too.)

      It seems like watching WITH your child and talking with them about what is going on in the shows is pretty key to helping them learn from and process what they are seeing.

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  15. I don't buy any clothes with characters on them, I just don't like them!
    I do let Charlie watch some TV though, mainly while I am trying to do washing etc..
    The other day he came up to me and said 'elbow' whilst pointing to his elbow. I was a bit stunned and guess he learnt it on TV. I often do talk to him about what we are watching, and he loves that rather than being left to watch on his own.
    That being said, if the TV is on, he is watching it, and I must remember to turn it off sometimes as trying to engage him with it on is almost impossible.

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