Teaching Liam about consumerism is tricky, when I have such pronounced consumerist tendencies myself. But I am trying to do it all the same - trying to teach him to question consumer culture; to first Reduce, then Reuse and finally Recycle.
In my favour are the facts that I am a cheapskate (and with good reason, given our finances), and that I have a bit of a depression mentality. So I try to avoid spending money anyway, and I hate to throw anything out.
Against me is the fact that I am an emotional shopper. When I’ve had a bad day, I don’t just want to eat chocolate, I want to buy myself chocolate or some other treat. Also I like buying things. That seems to contradict the cheapskate statement I know, but I like buying certain kinds of things, especially if I think they are bargains. It’s hard to define better than that, but when I am in certain kinds of stores, newsagents, hardware stores, Big W, I have this urge to purchase something, anything. Bunnings especially because the options are so many – a sample pot of paint to try on the bathroom wall, a bag of cow poo to dig into the garden, a punnet of seedlings perhaps… You get the picture.
But I am trying to improve myself, and I am trying to help Liam be aware of the impacts of our consumption.
This is my Blog Action Day post, because I believe everyday consumerism is a major threat to the environment.
So what am I doing with Liam? Well, first trying to curb my own consumerist ways.
Aside from that I do the obvious things like say No almost every time he asks me to buy him something; I don’t let him watch any commercial TV (which we wouldn’t do anyway, for a host of reasons); and I try to avoid taking him into toy shops and the like, although with even the supermarkets already in full Christmas mode with huge toy displays everywhere, that last one is a little tricky.
Luckily Liam doesn’t tend to ask for stuff he sees in shops all that much – not the big things anyway. I suspect that’s because we have always said no. Things that either we, or as often as not a certain grandfather, have bought before (certain food items in our case, rubber balls and other inexpensive junk in his grandfather’s) he does ask for, although he’s mostly learned to not bother asking me for the junk. I do let him buy a 50c item from St Vinnie’s quite often, which I explain is because it’s second hand, so no new resources have gone into making it for him. I’m not sure if he takes that in though.
I also do talk to him about the environment and the Reduce/Reuse/Recycle slogan. We talk about saving resources like water and trees, and we’ve talked about the importance of habitat preservation (though not in those terms). He understands a bit about the drought and water restrictions and a little less about global warming, although he still wastes a lot of water. This may not seem that connected to consumerism, but water use, power use – it’s all consumption.
Recently we bought a second hand freezer, and it took us a few months of haphazard looking to find one we were happy with, so again, I explained to Liam that we really wanted to get a second hand one so there wouldn’t be any new resources (electricity is the thing he mainly understands) used to make it for us.
All in all I’m not sure how successful I have so far been in avoiding inducting Liam into the rampant consumerism of our culture, but I am trying. The two most important things I think I can do are to bring up the impact we have on the environment in little ways often, and to lead by example. I’m better at the first than the second, but I’m getting there.
One other thing I will do is give him Jean Hegland’s Into the Forest, when he’s old enough to cope with it. That book had quite an impact on me (though it certainly didn’t do anything good for my packrat habit, unless you count never throwing anything away as a good thing!).
Do you have any other suggestions for this parenting project?
