Advertising And Our Wee Ones

The other day the wee one and I were out on one of our road trips with the aim of...well nothing in particular to be honest!

The wee one likes the car and the fact that her car seat is of a decent height is an added bonus, allowing her to see the world around her as we drive by. This often leads to a game of eye spy everything and makes for a trouble free journey no matter the length.
On this particular journey the wee one decided a power nap was an appropriate use of her time as she had seen all she had wanted to and granddad was not guessing the eye spy clues very well!
On the journey home the car seemed over quiet and feeling a wee bit lonely I stuck on the local radio station. The programme that was on was a listener phone in debate with a wide range of topics on children, as you can imagine this would be classed as good listening by myself.

One topic out of all the others stood out like a sore thumb, not just a sore thumb throbbing but one that had been hit square on with a hammer.

The debate was passionate with some excellent speakers putting their point of view across, sadly for me it was all one sided and if any parent or in my case grandparent was listening they could be forgiven for thinking that we had a massive issue on our hands, an issue that only the government could sort out, leaving us as the guardians of our wee people, totally helpless and at the mercy of this terrible 'disease' that was effecting our young!!

So what was the major issue that was shaking society to its core? what was the issue that took over half an hour of the airwaves to debate? a debate that was completely one sided with no dissenting voices, not even a hint of a counter argument. Could it be that we were about to have an out break of several viruses that need inoculation, was there a new more sinister threat from the murky world of paedophilia that had all sane people in agreement, and if that was the case you would understand a one sided debate, as there is only one side that is sane and true.

No, the topic that had one side only, was none of the life threatening things that we as parents or grandparents spend our nights worrying about, it was a discussion centred on that of advertising aimed at children or that children engaged in and the damage that this was doing to our wee ones.
Now I am not saying some of these adverts are not of concern to me, but was this really a national crisis that should involve government ministers? The question was now out there and not only that it was floating about my car! It did however focus my grey matter and got me to thinking about my own childhood, that of my children and now grandchildren.
In my own case, I was never in the house as the great outdoors was my play park, and in fact we never owned a telly until I was about nine years old- and even then it did not play too much a part in my life as I could go out and play in colour instead of looking at others playing in black and white!!

However I did want the flared jeans and the bleached denim jacket and the chopper bike all of which were the rage amongst my age group, a rage passed on by peers and word of mouth on the street- no advertising necessary. Now the fact I never got any of those items, did not stop me growing up with morals and having a sense of fairness.

My Own children were exposed to slightly more telly as by then everyone and their dog owned one if not two! However again it did not stop my wee ones from being, yep wee ones. They knew how to play and they also never demanded toys or clothes because some advert had been on the telly! Even if they had they would not have been granted instant access!!

That takes me to the present day where the number of tellies and gadgets has increased-(a topic that we have discussed before headed technology and Kids)- and according to the debaters our wee ones are exposed to a number of media products that occupy their entire day, now if the debaters were accurate, and they were sure they were as every call backed up their theories, it would therefore follow that if the debaters were to be believed and again them seemed pretty positive, that the wee one now needs protection from the bad men that advertise the goods they want us to buy.

If you had just landed on planet earth from a world far away you would be forgiven for being an instant believer if you listened to the furious, passionate, pleading debate that was on the radio.
To me the whole point of being parents and grandparents had been missed, I had always assumed that our role in life, was to guide and steer our little people keeping them on a path, that would set them up for their adult lives. I have always believed we were there to make decisions that influenced out comes for our little people, decisions that we would hope that our life experience had helped us to get right!

So do we need a debate? do we need our government to step in? or should it be left to those that actually know best, the parents and grandparents? who as far as I know are more than capable of switching off the telly!!! I still believe that we have the ability to say no to our wee ones without caving into an advertising campaign, and finally and its just a thought, is it the wee ones that want the must haves or is it in fact us giving our wee ones the things we never had?
I leave you to decide after all you are the parent or grandparent whose decision is final!!