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By Mom Unplugged, November 13, 2007 7:29 pm

Here I am, ruminating in my corner about Christmas and fussing to myself about the annoying day I have had (running late…then a glass fell and exploded all over the kitchen/dining area requiring extensive and immediate vacuuming…running really late…then forgot it was son’s “Snack Day” so had to rush to grocery store on way to school…running really, really late, etc, etc…all day long). Meanwhile, it is Children’s Book Week this week and a good part of my blog is about … children’s books!

Oh well, I blame Pluto and my biorythms.

I discovered that it is Children’s Book Week by finally catching up on some of my blog reading and finding this interesting post at Not Quite Crunchy Parent. MC Milker cites an interesting statistic in her post:

“…60% of children’s books sold are entertainment tie-ins or based on licensed characters.”

I find this fascinating, yet not surprising. In this day and age it is pretty obvious that a child can see the movie, watch the TV show, buy the plush toy and the action figures, go to McDonald’s and get more toys, and read the books all tied in to the same commercial character.

I guess this is all a form of “branding.” However the flip side is that if it takes Sponge Bob, Care Bears, or Transformers to entice a child to read, I suppose these books do serve some purpose. But there are so many other WONDERFUL children’s books out there, that you don’t have to settle for boring, silly, and commercialized.

Even if you have spent only several minutes reading this blog, I think you will probably have figured out that my preference leans towards what I call “Unplugged Books,” books that do not tie in to TV shows or movies. As MC Milker points out, these books can be harder to find. Walmart doesn’t usually carry them, and even at a “real” bookstore like Barnes & Noble or Borders you might have to know what you are looking for when you go in, or at least be prepared to spend a lot of time digging around.

Of course, root around your local library too. Sometimes a good children’s librarian will put interesting, high-quality, lesser-known books on display. Those displays can be a good place to start.

Where I live, our only non-religious book sources are Walmart, Kmart, and a tiny, poorly stocked bookstore. Our library is pretty small too, so I end up buying a lot of books online.

My tricks for finding “Unplugged Books” online are the following:

- Find some online toy stores that sell “natural” or “Waldorf” toys and see if they sell books. Many of them do. I can guarantee that you won’t find any Sponge Bob or Scooby Doo at those stores (or save time and check my Unplugged Book Stores list).

-These types of “natural” stores often have links to other similar stores or websites, and those links might lead you to books. Look for a “links” section in the main page index.

- Find an interesting-sounding recommended title on a blog (such as mine!) and pull it up on Amazon. Look at the section labeled “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” and any “Listmania!” links that might appear in the left sidebar. I often find wonderful books I had never heard of, simply by following these links. Also, check for other books by the same author. I guess this is the online equivalent of browsing at a good library. I love it!

- There are a lot of blogs out there that often write about children’s books. You won’t find these bloggers recommending anything too mainstream either. The blogs I am familiar with that often recommend children’s books in the posts or sidebars are the following:

Painted Rainbows and Chamomile Tea

Wildwood Cottage

A Wrung Sponge (the blog author, cloudscome, is a children’s librarian)

The Rowdy Pea

The Owl and the PussyCat

Jen Robinson’s Book Page

If you know of other useful children’s literature blogs, please tell me about them in the comments.

- Of course, I must humbly mention that I also write a lot of reviews of children’s books. You can find them by clicking my category “kids’ books” (right sidebar, “What I Write About” drop-down menu). You can also click the subcategories to help find the kind of books you are looking for.

- Lastly, in case you missed it earlier, I should once again direct you to my list of Unplugged Book Stores (top right sidebar). These are stores that sell non-mainstream, “Unplugged Books.” Please check the list regularly because I am always adding new links as I find them.

I hope you find this advice helpful in your search for great children’s books. It takes a bit more effort, but trust me, the results are really worth it! Have fun!

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By Mom Unplugged, November 5, 2007 10:17 pm

Now that Halloween is behind us, do you know what holiday comes next? What’s that? “Thanksgiving” you say? Wrong…Christmas is next! At least it is in the eyes of the advertisers, the stores and the catalogs.

My Friday trip to Walmart to buy my daughter’s new fish was my wake up call that the next holiday is actually Christmas. Two days after Halloween, Halloween was GONE. The little that remained was relegated to three small shelves containing a few squashed nylon Jack O’Lanterns, several flimsy costumes too ugly to have made it into a shopping cart, and a few dozen bags of cheap, tasteless candy that is now even cheaper (and which will certainly be even more tasteless by next Halloween).

Halloween has disappeared, and in its place there are plastic Santas, jolly singing snowmen, giant inflatable snow globes, and animated wire reindeer made of Christmas tree lights. The toy department is bustling with extra employees stocking the already full shelves with even more cheap plastic Chinese toys. Everything there talks, rumbles, roars, or at least flashes multicolored lights.

To me, there are few things more depressing that the annual Christmas propaganda that seems to begin earlier and earlier all the time. Why don’t they just leave the decorations and Christmas carols up and going all year long? That would surely save some money and maximize profits too.

By now, you might have detected an ever so slightly cynical tone to my thoughts on Christmas. Yes, as you may have guessed, every year I struggle with Christmas and how to make it something other than a shopping and accumulation fiesta. As my children grow older, it is becoming more and more troubling to me.

If it were just me, I would prefer to simply skip Christmas altogether. How’s that for being a complete Scrooge? “Scrooge Unplugged.”

But it is not just me in the world, so I can’t merely stick my head in the sand. I have three children who want to (and should) “do” Christmas. So this year, I am determined to continue my progress toward a simpler, more meaningful Christmas.

With that depressing little intro, I announce a new series at Unplug Your Kids entitled “Christmas Unplugged.” By Christmas, I also mean Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, or whatever your personal over the top, year end festival of light might be.

So…if you are interested…stay tuned for my thoughts, and hopefully practical ideas, for unplugging your holidays.

Thanks to morguefile.com and photographer Clara Natoli for this photo.

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By Mom Unplugged, October 29, 2007 9:54 pm

One of the things that bothers me about shopping for toys is that “need to have” feeling. It seems that there are two ends of the “need to have” spectrum.

One end is the commercial, media and advertising-driven branding that occurs, where children “need to have” the latest Tickle Me Elmo, or Bratz doll. As an unplugged household, my children are not subjected to the same barrage of ads so this is not such a problem. They do pick up some information on the playground at school (even at their small Montessori school). They know who Sponge Bob and the Disney Princesses are, but they really don’t know much about all the character toys out there.

Even if we venture to the toy aisle of Walmart or Kmart (unfortunately our only two local “toy store” options), they are interested in looking, and sometimes express interest, but don’t “need to have” those popular toys. They love inspecting toy catalogs that come in the mail and often see something in there that they “need,” especially my son (age 5) and especially if it involves a weapon (I feel another post coming on about that subject!). But they are blissfully unaware of what is truly popular.

The other end of the spectrum of “toy need” is that of the “natural” toys, Waldorf-inspired toys, or Montessori-inspired toys. I believe that this “need” is driven more by parents than children. Many parents, myself included, want to supply their child with good quality, non-toxic (hopefully), long-lasting, educational toys. We “unplugged parents” don’t believe in the huge wave of new electronic toys marketed as being educational. We believe in simple, classic toys without noises or flashing lights. Toys such as blocks, playsilks, simple wooden vehicles or dolls for example, are what we choose to buy for our children.

As a member of this second group, I love all those “Unplugged Toy Stores” that I link to in my left sidebar. The truth is however, that these toys are expensive for what they are, and the toys are often imported from Europe (which of course leaves a larger carbon footprint). Amanda of The Rowdy Pea recently wrote a wonderful post with some suggestions for making many of these toys yourself.

- Fun! (“Unplugged Project” anyone?)
- Inexpensive, or even free in some cases.
- And quality you can trust because you made it yourself!

I guess I’ll still seek out those websites, and buy those toys, but if I can make it easily myself, then I should really try to do that and feel a lot better about the whole “unplugged toy” shopping process! Thanks Amanda!

A few interesting toymaking links:

MotheringDotCommune-Toys and Dolls Page (discussion forum of Mothering.com) - interesting posts and suggestions for making your own Waldorf dolls and toys.

PlaystandPlans.com - plans for making your own playstands - $17.99 (but honestly, as Amanda points out, playstands seem pretty simple and a semi-decent handy-person should probably be able to figure it out.

(*Great blog!*) Echoes of a Dream - Basic instructions for making a Waldorf doll, her hanging fairies are lovely too!

Waldorf Doll photo from Wikimedia Commons, photographer Sebastian Sprenger, click here for full license information.

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By Mom Unplugged, August 13, 2007 11:00 am

This is old news now (about one week old) but I MUST blog about it. A study by Dr. Thomas Robinson, the director of the Center for Healthy Weight at Packard Children’s Hospital and associate professor of pediatrics and of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine has found that children ages 3 to 5 tend to prefer the taste of food that comes in a McDonald’s wrapper over identical food which does not.

Dr. Robinson’s research team gave 63 children, ages 3 to 5, the following foods: chicken nuggets, a hamburger, french fries (all from McDonald’s) as well as baby carrots and milk (from the grocery store). Each child received two portions of each food. One portion was wrapped in a McDonald’s wrapper or bag, the other was in a plain wrapper. The children overwhelmingly preferred the food in the McDonald’s wrapper over the identical food in the plain wrapper.

Dr. Robinson says:

“Kids don’t just ask for food from McDonald’s, they actually believe that the chicken nugget they think is from McDonald’s tastes better than an identical, unbranded nugget.”

Other interesting (and frightening) findings of the study are the following facts about the children:

- One third of the children ate at McDonald’s more than once a week.

- More than three-quarters had McDonald’s toys at home

- They had an average of 2.4 televisions in their homes

- More than one-half the children had a TV in their rooms! (Wow! These kids are only 3 to 5 years-old!!!)

Discussing his findings, which seem to link TV-viewing with a preference for McDonald’s, Dr. Robinson said:

“We found that kids with more TVs in their homes and those who eat at McDonald’s more frequently were even more likely to prefer the food in the McDonald’s wrapper. This is a company that knows what they’re doing. Nobody else spends as much to advertise their fast-food products to children.”

This frightening placebo effect of food preference in children seems to me to be yet another argument in favor of placing some sort of limit on food marketing to kids. If you want to read a bit more about about recent efforts to put limits on food ads targeted to kids, please read my June 25th post Food Marketing to Kids.

So, in case anyone still had a doubt, kids as young as ages 3 to 5 can be successfully “branded” by large corporations spending billions on TV advertising targeted at young viewers.

OK. On a lighter note, I think I’d better stock up on McDonald’s wrappers for a proper presentation of my A-list brussels sprouts to my children. “Hey kids, did you know McDonald’s now serves brussels sprouts? Yum!!!!!”

The study: Effects of Fast Food Branding on Young Children’s Taste Preferences appearing in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medecine, Vol. 161 No. 8, August 2007

(You can read an article about the study at the Washington Post online: Foods Taste Better With McDonald’s Logo, Kids Say.)

Thanks to morguefile.com and photographer spress for the “Good Food” photo.

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By Mom Unplugged, June 25, 2007 10:46 am

Another good reason to unplug your kids is to reduce the amount of marketing that they are exposed to. One more interesting story on NPR this morning (in addition to the children’s book recommendations that I posted about here) is entitled: Child Obesity Concerns Prompt Shift in Food Ads.

The story quoted some frightening statistics: 2 to 7 year-olds see an average of 12 food ads per day (approximately 4,400 ads per year) and 8 to 12 year-olds see an average of 21 food ads per day (approximately 7,600 per year). Of course most of these ads promote candy, junky snacks, fast food, soda, and sugary cereals. (Kaiser Family Foundation study: Food for Thought: Television Food Advertising to Children in the United States).

Much research has been done that establishes a link between childhood obesity and TV watching. The current thinking on this, is that it is not just the passive, sedentary nature of TV watching that contributes to obesity, but also the fact that the TV encourages children to want to consume the types of food that they see in the ads.

I am sure that this logic is debateable, however I would think that there would be very few parents who would object to a reduction in the marketing of unhealthy foods to their children, regardless of the reasoning behind that.

There is currently no legislation governing the marketing of food to children. The Center for Science in the Public Interest is a consumer advocacy group that is trying to convince food companies to stop marketing junk food to first graders. Apparently the FTC is also pressuring the major food manufacturers to limit their marketing of unhealthy food to kids.

Last fall, eleven food companies (including Kraft, Kellogg’s, Coke, and General Mills) agreed to voluntarily limit the marketing money they spend on unhealthy ads and use more of that money to promote healthier foods. I do not know if there is any proposed timetable for the change, and having no TV I can’t say if there is a noticeable change in the types of food ads kids see (cynical me suspects not).

The food companies are worried that if they don’t set some voluntary guidelines for themselves, there will certainly be legislative, or even court action. Such non-voluntary restrictions might be stricter than limits the companies could set voluntarily now.

Stay tuned. I imagine that we shall be hearing more about this in the coming months. In the meantime, consider ad-avoidance another HUGE benefit of unplugging your kids!

To hear this interesting story in full, click here.

Photo courtesy of morguefile.com and photographer ppdigital.