I was very excited to come home from an outing this morning and find that my swaddling socks had arrived. Now that is service they were only ordered yesterday. I have now put them into the shop here is the leopard print design and posted a new article Swaddling revisited. I also have a cute picture of a baby wearing one on the home page.
I was reading a very interesting article in the Sunday Telegraph magazine about children who are born into wealthy homes and have everything that they want. It was suggested that parents in America and increasingly in this country have started to fetishise children in ways that are not particularly healthy. They photograph and video children incessantly and dress them up and surround them with exquisite objects, spending huge amounts of money adorning them for themselves and others to admire.Psychologist Madeline Levine says "You want to make sure that a child isn't under the impression that every movement of his/her life is worthy of memorising". Children may as a consequence grow up viewing normal mistakes as unacceptable. Parents are being mislead into thinking that children need so much more than they do to grow and develop. This shift has been blamed on our consumer culture and the emphasis on materialism.
Studies have shown that children for whom everything has come easily find hardship more difficult to handle. These children can't cope with delayed gratification but even with all their possessions are chronically disatisfied. When they can only define themselves through material goods it is more difficult for them to get to a place where they have achieved an identity because there is always someone who has more or something they haven't got. What do you think about this? Do you think its a load of rubbish or is there perhaps grains of truth? I would love to hear your views, personally I think that it is true that you don't do kids any favours by making everything too easy for them but on the other hand you love them and want to indulge them. Its a dilemma isn't it?
Linda
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