For many years now I’ve been trying to impress on H.o.p. an attitude of being somewhat content with not pursuing, in the name of Green, superconsumerism. This has fallen on deaf ears with respect to toys…and when he first saw the large houses in which his friends live, and their expansive backyards, I worried that one day he was going to start complaining about our small urban apartment.
H.o.p. now likes doing things like the Hungersite click to donate. He incorporates global warming into his stories. He is a big time treehugger and calls trees his friends. But his affection for trees and water has, to date, very little effect on his decisions as far as desires. And, being nine, what he desires are toys. Legos and dragons. Lots of plastic with lots of cardboard and plastic packaging. He gets his fair share of toys (gobs of them, buckets of Legos and dinos and dragons) often now using his allowance (well, kind of often) but I’ve hoped to get him to understand one day the concepts of sustainability and resources.
I was at least able to talk him out of, prior last Christmas, supporting McDonalds and Burger King purely for their plastic toys. He didn’t like it that many of the goods he gets are produced by what I told him was virtually slave labor. I couldn’t tell him it was only the cheap stuff as I don’t know that. More expensive goods come out of the labor mills as well. But overnight he gave up, at least, the “free” plastic toys. Which meant also giving up his french fries, which was a good thing, and was, I confess, my main worry about his asking for fast food so much, but he didn’t care about how lots of french fries aren’t a good thing.
After doing his daily donation clicking Monday before last, H.o.p. turned to me and he said he could do without a lot of things but he would like a Big House. With a nice big yard. Like some of the people we know. He really likes how they live. He likes it a lot better than our small apartment.
Gack.
“Yeah, all that room is nice, isn’t it.” Then I took him online and I showed him newer, smaller designs for sustainable living houses. I talked to him about how much energy and resources many of those houses he visits use and how if you can afford a house it’s best now not to think big but think of sustainable living. It helped that the houses I was showing him looked pretty cool. “Hey, I like those!” H.o.p. said and stopped complaining about not having the big house. I asked him today if he still wanted a large house. He said, “No, it’s bad for the environment. It doesn’t matter how big your house is, it matters how big your heart is.”
I hadn’t said that to him, I’d told him that big houses detrimentally impact the environment, but he’s saying things like this recently, talking about things like clothing prejudices and how life is bigger than clothes.
A little over a month ago, I forget what H.o.p. said about toys but his attitude really got under my skin. Seemed every day there was a new Lego toy he wanted or something else. What exactly he said is lost to memory but I do recollect that I thought if he was going to say that, with the attitude with which he said it, then he could afford to think a little deeper about some things. Which is when I did what was perhaps a not very nice thing. He’s grown up around the homeless, they’re everywhere around here, but what he sees on the streets are men and women, not kids, his peers. I said come here and I felt bad doing it but I showed him a picture of a starving child, one that might make an impression without being too traumatic. I asked him what he saw. A starving child, he said, and that it was terrible. We talked about how there is a difference between wants and needs and many of the things he had were a matter of wants, not needs, which I didn’t want him to feel guilty about, but that many people didn’t even have what they needed, and too many people were taking more than they needed without thinking about it. I’ve talked to him about this before but he was younger, and for some reason I now felt that a picture like this might make a difference whereas before it would have been just confusing and to no good purpose. Now, I knew this wouldn’t impact his wanting toys. He’s going to want all these toys regardless. I just was hoping to expand his vision a bit.
Immediately, I then told him that I wasn’t showing him this picture to make him feel bad, that I wasn’t doing it to make him feel guilty, and that I wouldn’t have done it if there wasn’t something he could do. Which is when I took him to the Hungersite and and I pressed the click to donate button and I told him that little action alone had donated some food to an individual. He was genuinely excited about this. I then showed him some other click to donate sites and put links to them on his blog so that he could easily go to those sites daily and make individual donations. I didn’t want him doing a one click thing that donated to multiple sites. He was obviously interested, he liked going through and reading about what he was helping, so I put individual links so he could go through and take time making those clicks and really feeling like he was helping, but I made it all easy to access. I figured that little bit of time took him outside of preoccupation with self which was in itself a good thing.
Though he is just doing the freebie things like Hungersite clicks, he does it religiously and I think it’s contributing to what may become an environmentally and socially conscientious mindset. He clicks to help pets in need. He clicks to save rain forest. He clicks to help the fight in breast cancer. He clicks to help tigers. “Let’s help the rain forest! I’m going to help save the rain forest now because of all the animals that live there and because they’re the lungs of the planet. What shall I do next. Marine lands? I want to save the oceans. Look, I just fed a hungry primate! I’m so glad I was able to help that primate, it might have been in need without me. What next? Look, I just helped a child in need!” With each click, he reads what he helped to save and takes it all to heart. And he doesn’t tire of it. He believes he has done something worthwhile and positive.
I don’t tell him he’ll get something out of it. There’s something terribly unhealthy about American wants when in the 70s and 80s a huge business was built out of the positive thinking mold of telling Middle American individuals that if they gave this or that it would serve as a magnet for getting all that they desired, both in religion and the self-help market. The message wasn’t geared any longer for people in desperate need; these were often people with nice homes, clothing, their physical needs certainly met. But they wanted more. A lot more…
Anyway, he still wants most every Lego toy he sees, most of which are discontinued. I tell him the expense adds up and he’ll have to use his allowance if he really wants that and that. He’s fine with it but dismayed over the shipping prices on Ebay.
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