Shanna is starting to get to the point where she is asking me to buy her stuff other than food. (She has been asking for food stuff for a long time, but I really don’t have any issue with her constant requests for fruit. That’s a-ok in my book.)

This morning she was looking through the Hanna Andersson catalog. She asked for a couple of things in the catalog. I told her we could put it on her Christmas list. She thought that was a pretty awesome idea even after I clarified that stuff being on her Christmas list does not guarantee that she will be getting it. It’s a possibility not a promise.

This is slightly weird for me. My Christmas lists were treated as wholly irrelevant. My mom bought what was on sale. I didn’t get the stuff I wanted the most (beyond books–I did get the books I wanted most of the time) and I think I have that poor kid issue of, “Well my kids won’t have to suffer through the constant disappointment I did!” But uhm… I’m finding myself struggling with a balance. I also don’t want to do what so many poor kids turned middle class parents do–namely spoiling the shit out of my kids so they have a horrible entitlement complex. No thanks. I sincerely feel like one of the best things teaching did for me was show me the end result of a lot of parenting strategies and help me learn which ones to avoid. (Teaching 16/17 year olds was perfect.)

It’s hard for me because we totally could afford to just go buy her the like 5 things she currently wants. It wouldn’t be a blip in our budget. But… no. I need to find the happy medium there. She has plenty of stuff. Much of it hand-me-downs. She has really nice stuff by and large. And that’s good enough. She doesn’t need tons more stuff. I think it is going to be a long-term struggle for me to deal with my own baggage around stuff in a way that is healthy for her. There is nothing wrong with her saying, “Oh that’s neat; I would like to have that.” It is not a guilt trip on me that I should provide it. It’s not a demand. It’s a statement of fact–she thinks she would like to have it. It’s ok for her to think that. It’s also ok for me as the parent to say, “I can understand why you would like to have that, but I don’t think we will buy it right now.” That’s ok too. I am not being mean. I am not denying her in some terrible way. It’s ok for me to set these kinds of boundaries because she is not yet capable of doing it herself. It’s ok. Really.