When I was little, my mother spent most of her time teaching metaphysical poetry to college students. Today, she spends most of her time talking about how much different my childhood was from that of my children. "I fed you applesauce when you were six weeks old, and you loved it," she snorted, after learning that current practice is to delay solid foods until six months. "Good God, honey — what’s wrong with a playpen?" she cried, seeing me continuously spotting my wobbly toddler instead of fencing him in.
Did I mention that my mother and I see things differently? I am a typical "Generation X" mom: I let my kids sleep in bed with me, and would prefer that they be held back in school for emotional stability rather than pushed ahead for academic advancement. There is one issue, though, that my Mom and I agree on — our loathing of the particularly noxious marketing phenomenon known as "Kids Growing Older Younger," or "KGOY."
Meet the Zero-to-Three Market
Even if you’ve never heard the term, you've probably seen its effect on your grandchildren's lives: It’s babies watching "genius" videos. It’s 2-year-olds using computers. And it's 4-year-olds demanding High School Musical backpacks. At every age, it's children being pressured to adopt attitudes, and accessories, once thought of as the province of kids an age group or more above theirs. More than anything else, though, KGOY is big money, and it works. It has had a profound effect on the so-called "zero-to-three" market, which is now the first segment in a comprehensive "cradle-to-grave" sales strategy. Products for kids younger than 3 represent more than $20 billion in sales a year, based in large part on marketing campaigns that intertwine educational promises with branded, commercial ploys.
Consider that according to some studies, more than half of all parents in the U.S. now believe that educational TV shows, and videos like those produced by Baby Einstein, are "very important" to their babies' intellectual development. Although this assumption has been vigorously debunked by many academic studies, more than a quarter of U.S. children younger than 2 have a TV in their room, despite the firm, widely publicized advisory from the American Academy of Pediatrics that kids that age not watch TV at all. The median time that children younger than 3 spend watching some form of media on a screen is slightly less than two hours a day — about as much time as they spend playing outside, and about three times as much time as they spend being read to.
The marketing campaigns to make your infant grandchildren smarter through new media, instead of letting the kids make discoveries for themselves by visiting playgrounds or playing with traditional, tactile toys, represents the KGOY phenomenon's inevitable final step, into the crib. But is it even real? Are kids really "getting older younger"?
A Baby Is Still a Baby
Having researched the subject for several years, I can report this for certain: Babies and toddlers aren’t. While even slightly older children may not really feel as old as they (try to) act, and have the self-awareness to know the difference, all but the most cloistered among them still have some frame of reference for their KGOY aspirations. Babies and toddlers do not. Babies and toddlers are not little kids; they do not think like little kids. The developmental gap between an 18-month-old and a 4-year-old is as wide a gap as exists in human development.
The success of "educational" programs and products targeting your youngest grandchildren despite the lack of actual evidence that they provide any real benefits (they may even harm children by lashing them to a TV or computer screen) should be proof of the power of the KGOY phenomenon. But at older ages, one sees the other, insidious effects of this important economic and cultural shift: Our kids are becoming consumers at alarmingly younger ages and suffering all the ills that rampant materialism used to visit only on some teens or adults — including anxiety, hypercompetitiveness, and even depression.
Be an Age-Appropriate Grandparent
What’s a grandparent to do? Read, play, nap, or walk with your youngest grandchildren, or do nothing at all. Just be with them. Every experience is a learning experience for babies and toddlers. Enjoying them now makes everyone feel good, and, according to every expert, it is when they feel good that children learn best, not when their favorite character is on TV. As for slightly older grandchildren, remember that, at some level, they know they're not really the kids their consumerist desires say they are. They may tell you they want to listen to Hannah Montana, but if you sit with them and start singing interactive, age-appropriate rhymes or songs, they'll join in. What's appropriate will always work. Stand your ground.
As for my mother and me, we may see almost everything differently, but in one regard we are completely identical: When my 7-year-old recently whined in the most irritating way that he was “bored,” I heard myself responding, "There is no such thing as boredom — only a failure of imagination." That has a comforting, immutable ring to it. Commercial culture may try to foist it on them, but kids are not getting older younger. And parenting philosophies may change, but at least in the big ways, daughters still become their mothers.
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