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Shopping by choice
Gone are the days when a cricket ball or a dandy doll would please your kid. New-age kids are more demanding, reports Manoj Ahuja.
Gone are the days when a cricket ball or a dandy doll would please your kid. New-age kids are more demanding. More aware. And of course, more choosy. Not surprisingly, then, going shopping for toys has become a harrowing experience for parents. If they take the kid shopping, s/he might demand a toy of his choice, price be damned. If s/he is left at home, s/he might reject it.
“A lot depends on what type of exposure you as a parent give your child,” says child psychologist Dr Sunita Gupte. The media, she points out, also targets children. “There are a host of channels directed at children. Games such as Spiderman also lead to competition among them where the attitude is ‘my friend has this toy, so I should have one too.’”
With the rise in purchasing power, parents buy gifts for children out of guilt. “Take only 20 minutes out of your daily schedule to play with him rather than buying him an expensive toy and you will learn a lot about your child,” says Dr Gupte.
