Pester Power: Buy Me Buy Me

I still have my first and only Barbie doll. Thirty years later, my nieces had at least six or seven Barbie dolls each. Today, kids are more consumer-driven than ever regardless of the economic landscape. When you add to that guilt from a divorce, a smattering of manipulation, a pinch of parental competition plus “Pester Power” then you have quite the situation.

My husband separated from his ex when his son was 5 years old and his daughter was a tween. Unfortunately, he succumbed to parenting by guilt. Whenever the kids spent time with him, they would make a request and Daddy would get it.

Today’s kids are heavy media users and typically early adopters of new technologies. With his son, the purchase was usually technology --- game consoles, handhelds and games for each one. The first PSP he got was $250; the Xbox was over $300. In addition, the little darling will play the games nonstop (which cost $20 and up) until he has beaten them and becomes bored. Imagine what he could do if he focused that much energy on school work.

According to Juliet Schor’s book, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture, kids in the U.S. reportedly spend $30 billion per year. And that’s just the four-to-12-year-olds! YTV’s 2002 Tween Report estimated Canadian children between nine and 14 spend $1.9 billion and influenced $20 billion in family purchases per year. The results of the Cartoon Network’s New Generations Australia 2003 survey claims that children age seven to 14 spend $471 million a year. And 92 percent admitted to pestering their parents to purchase products for them. Our little angels have way to much cash to smash.

Every Christmas or birthday, I am hounded, bulldogged, sweet-talked, pestered and whined at for the latest and greatest piece of technology. I’m constantly picking my chin up off the floor after one of these conversations. Currently we’re feuding over the infamous cell phone conundrum. My son says the slider phone we bought 6 months ago was “old’ technology. It now lays broken in my desk drawer. It was his fifth phone in less than 3 years. His sister received a new cell phone for her birthday and my son wants a new one that’s better suited for texting. Another one of his friends got a “new” technology cell phone with access to the Internet. And all our discussions on how there will always be someone with a newer better whatever continues to fall on deaf ears.

Children are influenced by the spending habits of their parents’, peer pressure, and the power of advertising. The 12 to 17 year olds in Juliet Schor’s book, spent $112.5 billion in 2003. And 87 percent of those big bucks were from mom and dad’s wallets. What are we doing to our kids? How do we instill the value of a buck? Children from intact families try to play one parent off the other. Children in divorced families do the same with greater success because they have the "guilt" card they can play.

According to the 2007 InterpriseTM Poll, 8.5 percent of teens indicate that they have credit cards. Only 2.7 percent of teens ages 13 -14 reported having credit cards. That percentage almost doubles to 5.3 percent for teens 15-16, then again doubles to 10.6 percent for 17 year olds, and nearly triples to 28.8 percent for teens 18 and older. What are we doing to educate our kids about credit? NSLP Financial Literacy Online has a free course about Budgets, Credit and more that you can check out.

What is really depressing is the U.S. Bankruptcy Court claims the number of young people 18 to 24 declaring bankruptcy increased 96 percent in the past decade thus making them the fastest-growing group of bankruptcy filers. And in 2002, more people filed for bankruptcy than graduated from college.

It's no surprise our teens need a reality check as shown by Schwab’s Teens and Money Survey 2007. While the median household income in the U.S. is $48,000, teens believe they’ll be earning $145,000. Boy are they in for a rude awakening.

Teens are optimistic about they’re ability to achieve financial success but are clueless on what it will take to achieve those goals. Schwab MoneyWise has a guide with advice for helping kids of all ages learn about money. Remember to check out their “Practical Tips for Raising Financially Fit Teens.” Check out Hollis Harman’s site for some money games to download for your younger kids.

Here are a few tips to tackle “Pester Power:”

• Agree on tactics with your partner. Make the decisions together and stick to them so you don’t undermine each other. Set ground rules with your ex-partner and don’t let yourself get caught up in the competition if they buy the kids presents you can’t afford.

• Make memories. Remember your time spent having a pillow fight or whipped cream war will be remembered long after the latest toy has been trashed.

• Remember that children change their minds every other day with each new ad they see. Help them to realize that they can’t have everything they want. If it's a Christmas list then get them to put presents in order of their preference. And limit it to four or five.

• Help them to learn the difference between a want and a need.

• Go lock the bathroom door, turn up some tunes, soak in a nice hot bubble bath and fantasize about the days before kids or skids.
  

As parents, we should teach our children techniques for survival in our world. And it’s hard not to cave in and give them everything they want when they want it. If we make things too easy for them, they’ll have nothing to strive for. And what parent wants to end up with a thirty-year-old Xbox game player laying around our house all day eating cold pizza and guzzling coke?