Dear Mom, You Owe Me Toys

Posted on October 29, 2008
Filed Under Family, Little Sabreen | 3 Comments

When I was a kid I was very well behaved.
Yes, let me say that again.
When I was a kid I was very well behaved.

I’m not talking as a tween or teen or young adult – or even now for that matter.
I’m talking about from ages 0 to 4 when you don’t have anything to do except for hang out with your mom or stay-at-home dad or nanny or whatever you had when you were a kid.
You know, when you’re that age when you drive your mom crazy because all you do is scream and cry so then you get dumped in front of the television because your mom needs a break and you can actually see the veins bulging in her eyeballs and real smoke coming out of her flared nostrils?
Well, I wasn’t one of those kids.

With my dad at work and my older sister at school it was just mom and me. She would plop me on the counter while she cooked (I was in charge of handing her all the spices she asked for), we went to the grocery store together, hung out with my grandmother together and even went shopping together for toys that weren’t always for me.

Now that I’m not working a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., I end up at the grocery store, mall, post office, wherever during the same hours that all the stay-at-home moms are out.
And I try to avoid these hours.
Let me first say this: I AM ALL FOR STAY-AT-HOME MOMS.
No, let me clarify: I am all for GOOD stay-at-home moms.
I have them in my family. My own mom was one until my sister and I were in school full-time. I think it’s great. I’m not against moms that work but since I know what worked in my family, I’ll most likely do the same thing: work, have baby, stay at home with baby, baby turns 5, look for new job, baby goes to school, I’m back at work.
It’s a simple formula.
But the reason I avoid the double-stroller rush at any public place is because of the kids. THEY.ARE.NAUGHTY.

One day while I was at the grocery store, I was waiting at the deli to be helped. About 20 feet to my left a mom was with her three kids. A boy and girl — maybe like 6 and 4 and a 2-year-old boy who was standing in the shopping cart stomping his feet and screaming bloody murder at the top of his lungs. I couldn’t make out the words he was screeching but when I tried to read his lips I gagged because he had snot running into his mouth. Uh. Sick.
Okay, so he’s a kid and he’s having a bad day. I hate being in the grocery store as much as the next toddler and maybe if I were stuck in a steel cage on wheels I’d be ripping out my hair too. But what absolutely horrified me was that HIS MOM DIDN’T BAT AN EYELASH.
She seriously didn’t care. I probably would have been less shocked if she turned around and hit him in the face with a ham.
Why? Why didn’t she care? I’ll tell you why. BECAUSE SHE CAN’T HEAR HIM.
That’s the truth and now there is no one to blame. No, she wasn’t deaf, she was just immune to his behavior. I was furious.

If that was my kid…
Okay, so things will change when I have my own kids and maybe I’ll become immune too. I know people who have kids always get mad at people like me because we talk about how we’ll raise our kids better than everyone else when in reality we have not the faintest idea what it takes to be a parent.

I once saw a 4-year-old girl practically throw her body into the road begging to have a Dora doll as she left the store with her mom.
The mom tried to fight back but the kid was seriously possessed. When I walked into the store I think her head spun around to see where I was going. I wanted to buy that Dora doll and throw it at her.

In an effort to understand child behavior I sometimes tune in to Super Nanny or walk through the toy aisle to see what all the fuss is about. I mean really, is Big Bird himself for sale on the shelf? Why on earth would any child risk bodily harm FOR A DAMN TOY?
I’m not sure what’s going on with the toys for kids these days. I have two nieces and a nephew and when I try to buy them things I’m absolutely overwhelmed. I don’t understand how things work and the toys that don’t need to be assembled aren’t exactly the kind of plastic role models I would want my kids to cuddle up in bed with at night.
Why on earth would I let my child play with a Bratz doll?
So they can dream about growing up to become collagen-injected, leather-pant wearing, skater-boy-chasing nut jobs?
No thank you.
I’m not really sure how I feel about Hannah Montana, either. I get it — she’s cool and “normal” and loves rock and roll. But she also talks like a 63-year-old man with emphysema and is a product of total exploitation by her parents. (See Vanity Fair Project Turned Soft Porn: Starring Little Miley).
Little boys don’t have it as bad, they’re happy with their trucks and transformers. It’s the little girls we have to watch out for. They don’t have role models anymore – not even in toys.

I have to admit, I had a massive collection of Barbie dolls when I was little. But remember Doctor Barbie and Teacher Barbie? Hell, they even put Barbie’s friend Chrissy in a wheelchair so that everyone could look to Mattel’s classic dolls for inspiration. I never bought the whole “if Barbie was real she would fall over and die” thing. Tell me this, who the hell wants a fat doll?
My favorite doll was one that I still have to this very day. I’ve washed, cut and styled her hair, painted her nails, given her surgery, fed her real food and put my baby cousin’s diapers on her. She’s got one broken eye and smells like Carmex but she lives happily in the garage today with some of my old Cabbage Patch Kids.
I had innocent toys as a child like My Little Pony and I slept on Strawberry Shortcake bed sheets. But today’s kids are into everything commercial. And their role models pose naked on the Internet – oh by the way it was a girl who did that, too.

I’m sad. Really, I am.
I’d like to have kids someday and I’m starting to think the best way to raise them “normal” is to latch an IV of fluids to their arm, lock them in their room and slide dried beef chunks under their door. As for schooling, I’ll just play WTOP, BBC and CNN really loud in other parts of the house so they can stay up-to-date on current events.

I used to have big dreams about when I would have kids. I would be so hands-on and they would be so smart, friendly, compassionate and responsible. I would read to them while they were still in the womb with their wide –open heads and little tails still wiggling. I would never say “no” rather, “Please abstain from that behavior immediately.”
And the right choice of words could likely keep them from having pre-marital sex…unless of course they figure out some way to sneak someone into their bedroom through a window.
Note to self: invest in metal bars…or keep child in windowless room.

I see kids today that misbehave all the time and their parents are worse, bowing down to their child’s every wish and command. I read books and blogs on parenting and I even have a list of all the books I’m going to buy when I learn I’m having a baby. I see that women today are more outspoken and organized, educated and self-reliant. All of which I believe are good things. But that is why I’m often baffled to see how many moms write about their kids throwing temper tantrums and how they can’t get things done because their kids run the show. Every parenting column is about how to raise your kids.
The Boss has an aunt who told me recently that she raised her three kids without ever raising her voice and the kids responded to that kind of love.
Really? Maybe I should rethink the whole metal bars thing.

I never had tantrums or cried in public places. I didn’t ever beg for toys or refuse to leave a store. I did hide in clothing racks to annoy all the shoppers and would try, discretely, to touch their feet when they were close enough – but that was the extent of it. My mom had a way to ensure my behavior remained under control while we were out, she revealed one day. And I vaguely began to remember her methods.

First: You have to have a plan before entering the store. Know what you want, where to find it and where the register is. If the kid sees you stalling it gives them time to scan the store and spot something they want to touch.
Next: If your child is the right size, they get buckled in the cart. I was a little chubby so it was a tight fit, but that gave me fewer resources to plan an escape. And
Last (this one is big): When your child points to something they want you give it to them.

WAIT, WHAT?
No, you don’t buy it for them you let them hold it while you’re in the store. Then when you’re about to pay (and this is what my mom did to me) you tell them, “give him/her a kiss and say you’ll see them on your birthday.”
WHAT?!? When I heard that my knees felt weak. The vague memories came on full blown and I started having flashbacks of being stuck in that rotten cart telling all these toys I’d see them on my birthday. Where were all those toys now? The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Care Bears, Transformers, the rest of my WWF collection, that one baby that peed…WHERE WERE ALL MY TOYS?
I didn’t get them! I didn’t even know when my birthday was at that age and I was furious.
I decided to confront my mom about this. But first I had to figure out what she owed me. I sat down with a calculator and used a formula I just invented:
If a child starts wanting toys at 2 years of age and they want about 5 toys a week each year and they get bamboozled with the “see you on my birthday” trick twice a week for five years…
OH MY GOD MOM YOU OWE ME LIKE 467,988 TOYS!

I finally got a chance to ask my mom about these “birthday gifts” I never got.
And she laughed.
“You got lots of other things,” she said.
And that was the end of that.

I guess it is pretty rough when you’re a kid. You can never do what you want. If you have some genius idea to dig a hole in the back yard and show up in the middle of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing it’s “too dangerous.” If you want to run to the milk aisle and back to the deli while you’re brother times you, “you have to stay with mommy.” And if you just want to stick your finger in the water fountain at the mall, just once, “now we have to wash your hands.” Being a kid might look like it’s easy when you’re older but at the time it really sucks. The next time I see a screaming toddler or a 4 year old in the middle of a temper tantrum I’m just going to hand them Miley’s Vanity Fair spread and say, “Hang in there kid, you mom’s gonna cave any minute.”

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