DD5 would eat the marshmallow immediately, never ring the bell and convince the tester that they had forgotten to leave the marshmallow in the first place!

LOL, neato.

I suspect that there are many careers open to people with those skills, not all of them exactly legal, but still many options!

when you say not exactly legal, do you mean not exactly illegal either?
Hee hee hee
I've always said she will be a leader......leader of the free world or a prison chain gang!
But I think we had this conversation on a long ago thread!

I don't think that this is so.

Certianly giving stuff when you don't want to is a problem, but I really do believe that our children are 'drowning' in stuff. This part of the world is living with a very odd relationship to material goods.

At the very least I would say that if your child's room or closet looks like 'too much' to you, then rotate the stuff you do have (and love) by putting most of it in storage.

Second - we have to have personal policies to guide us through the muck. When will we buy stuff? What kind of stuff? How much? For a few years at our house every new 'thing' meant that an old thing had to be given away - or thrown away.

It's hard to make these decisions, but it's wonderful practice! We're going to face a lot more of them as the child grows, and I think we make the way easier for ourselves by practicing now. Will we let our 8 year olds wear make up? Will we let our 11 year olds see horror movies? How often will dinner be from a fast food resturant? How many afterschool activites?

Believe me, we need personal policies, and practice in sticking to them. Having out child see us 'just say no' to appealing things when they are little helps then know that we mean business. BTW - here's another place to practice negotiation with a spouse, and learning to work together. Very often spouse have very different views on what a reasonable personal policy should be.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Depack Choprah has a nice book about having a healthy relationship with material things.

Ah yes!
I was trying to think of that one last thing.

If one has too much stuff, and is trying to have more space and grace, then I reccomend Flylady.net as an 'Instruction Manual.'

Thanks for the post Grinity. One, I never buy when she asks and I don't think it is a good idea. About 90% of the time. I never buy when we are at Disney world and in the gift shop. But at Christmas I bought a 10 disney princesses and princes (convincing myself they are the same dimensions as Barbie and will slide into that era) plus 2 island princess Barbies.

I am very good at discipline and DD is a really good kid. Not that she doesn't try and act out, she is 3.5, but I just have to give the look and she knows the line has been drawn. Time outs are just a consequence but rarely acted on.

So it my fault on the material accumulation, all mine.

Ren

Cutting back on material things is very hard. I'll check out your recommended site, Grinity. I have been taking steps to end my book-buying addiction. When DS4 was born, my addiction transferred to books for him, and this turned out to be fine, since we read them over and over and over. But now that he doesn't care to read the books over and over, I made the big switch to the library yesterday. I was so proud. For one day. Then I read about Penrose the Mathematical Cat on another post, and of course our library system doesn't have it! I slipped already.

I admit, I have a strong love of books and always have! I have done the same as you, St. Pauli girl(we gotta come up with a nickname for you!)
I have carefully organized, sorted and stored the books I bought for each of the girls and put them in the attic when they were done. My hope is that when they have kids, I can give them back and they will share the love of those particular books with their children.
For the grandchildren!

Neato

Oh p.s. I just paid a fine of $50 at the library due to the sheer mass of books the four of us check out. It gets so confusing trying to remember whose books are due when!
I think the bookstore is cheaper sometimes!