Children’s excessive pursuit of material life is directly related to their parents

Last time we talked about many children who are keen to ask their parents for money to buy this or that. Their inner motivation is the desire for a sense of belonging. Well, there are also some children who are not interested in getting along with other people. They may already be very popular, or they may not care about socializing at all. Instead, they are not very interested in anything else. They just like to buy and buy. When it comes to shopping, they are obsessed with shopping. Excited, what's going on?

First of all, the book "Anti-Pampering" calls this kind of child "materialistic child". This hat is a bit big. Materialism is closely related to hedonism, both of which one-sidedly exaggerate the benefit function of material or material things. From a social ethics perspective, materialism ignores or even completely denies the value of spiritual culture and moral ethics, believing that spiritual culture and moral ethics are completely redundant, useless, or even harmful compared to material or material interests.

It is undeniable that our children do not have such extreme ideas, but frankly speaking, this tendency is still common in today's social status quo. Materialism itself is not heinous, but in terms of children's character growth, it is indeed not worth promoting. The reason is simple, we often say that we should pursue physical and mental health. Among them, mental health precisely emphasizes one's spiritual pursuit. After all, happiness is a psychological feeling, and materials can only provide help, not protection. Therefore, parents hope that their children are not so "materialistic". But why are there so many children with materialistic tendencies?

1. What kind of parents will cause their children to pursue excessive material enjoyment?

This time, I will give the conclusion first. From the perspective of financial and business education, children who excessively pursue material enjoyment are usually directly related to their parents. Among them, there are two types of parents, who are the main caregivers of materialistic children. We have said more than once that the important idea of ??financial and business education is to practice and teach by words and deeds. Parents must first arm their minds with correct concepts. So, what I’m talking about today is actually more about helping parents make changes. If we listen to it ourselves and correct it, we can have a positive impact on our children.

1. Parents who follow the crowd

Let’s talk about the first type of parents first, which are called “follow-the-pop” parents. "Following the crowd" is also reflected in two aspects: one is parents who are easily brainwashed by advertisements, and the other is parents who have no independent opinions and blindly follow others.

1) Parents who are brainwashed by advertising

Let’s talk about advertising first. "Anti-Coddling" mentioned a very enlightening study. There are two groups of children, both 4-5 years old. One group of children was assigned to watch an advertisement for Toy Soldiers, while the other group of children did not watch the advertisement. 70% of the children who did not see the ad wanted to play in the sand pool with their friends, while 36% of the children who saw the ad chose to play with the toy warriors instead of their friends.

The next situation is: you have to choose one of the two boys to be a friend. One of the little boys has a good character, but does not have a toy warrior; the other little boy has a not so good character, but has a toy. warrior. Only 35% of children who watched the commercial chose to play with a little boy with a good personality but no toys. When the researchers asked the same question the next day, the proportion of boys with good personalities increased, but only to 49%.

The commercial seems to make children value toys more than the virtues of their playmates. As for the children who did not watch the commercial, up to 70% chose to play with children with better personalities.

As a result, the researchers concluded that the impact of commercial advertising on children's personality and social skills does exist.

However, it is also worthy of our attention that most of the advertisements are actually for parents. Advertising also has a huge impact on parents. Especially today's advertisements are countless times more attractive than advertisements from 20 to 30 years ago. The appeal of celebrity endorsements and online celebrities selling products is even more difficult to resist.

In addition, we do live in a world full of advertising. In addition to traditional TV advertisements, what appear more frequently before our eyes may be elevator advertisements, bus and subway advertisements, posters on the side of the road, as well as a large number of online advertisements, mobile phone advertisements, and circle of friends advertisements. They have permeated around us like air. .

I still remember one day at the end of 2019, I entered the elevator in my community and suddenly found that the poster hanging on the wall was the slogan of "Ele.me": "Good but not expensive, affordable." It tastes good." Next to it is a TV advertisement, and Borgward's slogans repeatedly emphasize: "Good is expensive", "Expensive is good", "Good and expensive", which is really confusing.

In real life, quite a few parents are susceptible to the influence of advertising. Which one is the latest and most popular, which one is the flashiest and most trendy? Once you see the advertisement, you will be so-called "planted". To be honest, being easily "planted" is itself a sign of low financial intelligence.

A smart person is not someone who often walks by the river without getting his shoes wet. A smart person is someone who walks by the river as little as possible.

Therefore, the first thing parents who are easily impressed by advertisements should do is to increase their alertness. For many advertisements that can be set to be automatically skipped, they must resolutely skip them; for surrounding advertisements that cannot be avoided, , and try to maintain a rational and calm mind.

2) Parents who blindly follow others

Another kind of "following the crowd" parents are parents who blindly follow others. Last time we said that children are eager to be accepted by the group, but parents are not. However, there are some things that we just cannot follow blindly.

Many parents who "follow the crowd" see other people's parents enrolling their children in some interest classes, so they enroll their own children in it. I heard that other people's children started enrolling in the first grade of elementary school. If you study until 11 pm, you require your children to stay up until 11 pm before going to bed again.

If parents have no independent opinions, it is easy for their children to get used to "following the crowd". We talk about cutting leeks in the stock market, and what leeks are are people who join everyone in chasing ups and downs; we talk about collecting IQ tax, and what is IQ tax is the money paid by people who watch others snap up and think they should buy something. Obviously, parents do not want themselves or their children to become such "following the crowd" people.

So, for these two types of parents who “follow the crowd”, how should we change ourselves?

It’s actually very simple: making a budget and cultivating your own consumption outlook are fundamental.

Why are you so eager to buy everything? Because you don’t know what you really need and what your priorities are for what you need to buy.

The so-called budgeting is to make a plan for your overall consumption in the next month or year. Novices can only make a monthly budget. At this time, you have to think clearly about what your family really needs and what you just want. When you have a clear account mentally, you will not spend money blindly. Because you always have to make sure your budget can cover what you need before you can confidently buy products that are more likely to make people excited.

In this way, we can establish a psychological filter. When you see some ads again, it will not be so easy for you to "plant grass" for yourself. In other words, some things are good, but I don’t need them, or at least, I don’t need them now. Moreover, there is always something better tomorrow, and because I don’t need it now, I can buy other items that are more urgently needed first. When I really need this thing, its 2.0, 3.0 or even 4.0 version will be out. , it would be better to buy again.

So this strategy is a budgeting strategy. Once everyone implements it, children will be able to understand it, and they will know that something that is said to be worth having in the advertisement may not really be worth having.

2. Parents who misunderstand "good parents"

Let's look at the second type of parents, which are called parents who misunderstand "good parents".

There is a saying that feels harsh and true every time I hear it, and that is "Chinese-style parents." This name is really full of love and pain. What are the biggest characteristics of Chinese-style parents? Everybody's first consciousness is: dedication. Chinese parents love to dedicate themselves most to their children. However, objectively speaking, the word dedication is very inaccurate and quite misleading.

For example, the new coronavirus is raging in China and Hubei is short of vegetables, so Shandong Province generously donated tens of thousands of tons of vegetables to Hubei. This is called dedication, because the other party has needs.

If there is no need, it is not called dedication, it is called wishful thinking.

Some parents in our country buy this and that for their children every day, even neglecting their own lives. They think this is the contribution they should make to their children, but in fact, most of their efforts are just wishful thinking, because their children do not need it. Although this sounds unpleasant, this is the most common mistake Chinese parents make.

So back to our financial and business education, parents who mistake wishful thinking for "dedication" will first define "good parents" wishfully, that is, what I think is good for their children, I'll give him whatever I want. In this way, I have fulfilled my parental obligations. Coupled with the herd mentality of some parents, they will buy whatever other parents buy for their children, but this will make children with imperfect concepts develop the habit of comparison. Once they want something, they will say, "Others have it, but I don't. Do you not love me?" I believe that parents do not want to see such a result.

2. How can financial education reduce unconditional material nourishment for children?

How can this situation be solved through financial education?

It is also very simple. Parents can use money to regulate their understanding of love. Note the word, "normative." Love is actually a skill. It does come from emotion, but it often requires loyalty to reason. Parents’ love for their children cannot be entirely based on nature. Isn’t it because we dote on our children so naturally as parents?

How to regulate it? We must first realize that a truly good parent is someone who can help his children develop their optimism and struggle ability without limited resources. That is, even if life is not as rich as you expected, you still embrace life and remain optimistic.

Because there are always setbacks in a person's life. No matter how wishful thinking we hope that our children will have smooth sailing, 100% of our children will still have to go through hardships. If they don't even experience ups and downs, they really won't see the rainbow. As long as the suffering is endless, the joy will never come.

So, the first correct approach is for parents to work with their children on how to gain pleasure without having their parents give money directly to their children. That is, through the pocket money strategy we talked about before, children will gradually form the habit of spending their own money and doing their own things.

The second is to let the children come into contact with the lives of people at different levels, and try to experience it personally. When children realize that there are so many living conditions in the world, their views on life and their definition of happiness will become more mature. This is actually something that Chinese children generally lack today.

There is a concept called the information cocoon effect, which refers to the fact that people are habitually guided by their own interests in the information field, thus shackles their lives in a "cocoon" like a silkworm cocoon. phenomenon.

So, although children can theoretically see the colorful world through the Internet, due to the existence of the information cocoon effect, they may become more narrow-minded than before. Children spend a lot of energy every day focusing on their favorite celebrities and favorite products, but do not really take the time to experience real life that they are unfamiliar with.

Therefore, parents with a correct financial understanding will be willing to reduce their unconditional material nourishment for their children and spend more energy breaking out of their children's cocoon, so that they can have a broader mind to embrace life. .

Today we talk about how materialistic children are raised, mainly from two types of parents. One type is parents who tend to follow the crowd. They should learn to make a budget and establish their own consumption system. The other type is Chinese-style parents who want to use material security and other means to satisfy their children. They need to help their children learn to delay gratification through what we learned about pocket money earlier, and work hard on their own to peel off the cocoon for their children and let them Children embrace the world with a broader mind.

That’s it for today, see you next time!