Kids Stuff

It’s a well known fact that kids like stuff.

Long suffering parents know that there’s a whole industry based on helping kids part mums and dads from their hard-earned cash.

I read a newspaper article a while back by Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, in which he said that children nowadays have too many distractions, and that makes them prone to boredom as they never learn to entertain themselves. Boris suggested was children should be given a cardboard box and left to their own devices… Typical “eeh, when I were a lad” comments, I thought. What a load of rubbish…

Except…

We had to buy some new car seats for the girls, which came in big cardboard boxes, so I thought I’d make some castles out of them, but the girls got there before me, and have spent the last two days making caves, tunnels, houses for their dollies and a whole host of other things.

OK, it would be silly to suggest that cardboard boxes are likely to permanently replace Barbie, High School Musical, and other assorted distractions, but it was a reminder that imagination is in itself a powerful toy. And certainly costs less money, and generates less waste!

And for readers with children, who worry about the constant pressure to buy more stuff, I wholeheartedly recommend “Consumer Kids” by Ed Mayo.

Not just a shock-exposé, but a useful self-help guide. Available from all good bookshops, and Norwich Millennium Library.