Kids, advertising and jamoz's grouse with both
July 30th 2007 23:45
There has been a great push recently to stop advertising to children in regards to junk food. I'm not in the advertising business but it would seem that kids are a target market for a whole lot of things - toys, games and food (especially junk), movies (and everything that's tied into it which is usually junk food, games and toys). Why does anyone care why advertisers think of kids as a target market? Do they have money to spend? Where is your six year old's disposable income? It doesn't exist! Simply because they are too young to earn so the best that they can do is to pester their parents for something. The parents who fall into the trap of buying their kids everything, or for that matter if their child is FAT is not the fault of the advertisers. The parents need to take the responsibility of the mess that has been created here. If parents stood firm and learned to say "no" to their kids then things might be different.
If a child wants something and can't get it, then thats too bad, but children need to understand that they aren't going to get everything they want. Thats how they end up fat and spoilt. Thats how they also end up being bad sports because some of them don't know how to lose because they are taught that winning and losing are bad things to teach kids. How can someone truly sit down and justify that taking scorelines out of a game is a good thing? It teaches that in life (just as in sports) either you win or you lose. It's a lot harder to face losing when you're not used to it. When you can lose and lose with pride then you have maturity but to teach kids not to lose or to win is trying to shield them from the truth. Life hurts sometimes. Suck it up and deal with it.
Sports (especially competitive sports) are about winning and losing. So is life. A teacher told me that a parent called her and complained that her daughter is distraught because she wasn't chosen as a Prefect despite the fact that the girl had a dirty rotten stinking attitude (my words not the teachers) to her studies and to teachers. Why do we wrap our kids in cotton wool and then expect them to be world beaters when they will have little or no value to society because they won't know what the real world is like? If there is no losing in junior sports, no failure in exams and the kid can sit down and eat junk food and play his latest video game all day then what have we created as the next generation? Is that what we really want our kids to learn from us? Losing and failing are so diabolical? There is a lesson in everything we do. Losing and failing are what makes up our lives. So we lose a game or we fail and exam? You know what we do? We train and study harder so next time we are better prepared to reach new heights.
The problem is not the kids. It's the soft adults in a position of power (either a "child psychologist" or a parent who seem to think that kids need to be protected from every little thing that happens in life. I expect to see soon all kids drugged up on ADD/ADHD medication walking around in bicycle helmets, armguards and knee protectors to keep them physically safe. It's ironic that parents want to keep kids physically safe but load them up with junk food so they become grossly obese and then turn around and blame advertisers! How sad how relentlessly sad.
If a child wants something and can't get it, then thats too bad, but children need to understand that they aren't going to get everything they want. Thats how they end up fat and spoilt. Thats how they also end up being bad sports because some of them don't know how to lose because they are taught that winning and losing are bad things to teach kids. How can someone truly sit down and justify that taking scorelines out of a game is a good thing? It teaches that in life (just as in sports) either you win or you lose. It's a lot harder to face losing when you're not used to it. When you can lose and lose with pride then you have maturity but to teach kids not to lose or to win is trying to shield them from the truth. Life hurts sometimes. Suck it up and deal with it.
Sports (especially competitive sports) are about winning and losing. So is life. A teacher told me that a parent called her and complained that her daughter is distraught because she wasn't chosen as a Prefect despite the fact that the girl had a dirty rotten stinking attitude (my words not the teachers) to her studies and to teachers. Why do we wrap our kids in cotton wool and then expect them to be world beaters when they will have little or no value to society because they won't know what the real world is like? If there is no losing in junior sports, no failure in exams and the kid can sit down and eat junk food and play his latest video game all day then what have we created as the next generation? Is that what we really want our kids to learn from us? Losing and failing are so diabolical? There is a lesson in everything we do. Losing and failing are what makes up our lives. So we lose a game or we fail and exam? You know what we do? We train and study harder so next time we are better prepared to reach new heights.
The problem is not the kids. It's the soft adults in a position of power (either a "child psychologist" or a parent who seem to think that kids need to be protected from every little thing that happens in life. I expect to see soon all kids drugged up on ADD/ADHD medication walking around in bicycle helmets, armguards and knee protectors to keep them physically safe. It's ironic that parents want to keep kids physically safe but load them up with junk food so they become grossly obese and then turn around and blame advertisers! How sad how relentlessly sad.
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