Cut Your Coat according to Your Cloth

“Abah, please…. I promise to be a good boy. Just buy me the PS3 and I’ll get straight As, I promise. Fadly has one. Daniel also owns one. We’ll have one too, please…,” pleaded my youngest son to his Dad the other weekend.

I was like “What?! You need another game station just because your cousin and friend have one? You already own an X-Box and it’s not enough?” Of course, the request was being declined. (After the you’d-better-not-buy stare I gave my hubby, that is! He was already melting to his son’s Garfield-pleading look.) Talking about raising kids in the new millennium! I suppose that they think buying game stations like X-Box, Nintendo, PS3 or PSP, laptops, i-pods, 3G phones and other hi-tech gadgets is just like buying titbits by the roadside!

When asked why we need another game station, when we already have one, both of my kids explained that the X-Box that we owned is obsolete. It is hard to find new games compared to the latest version of X-Box 360. Thanks to the manufacturer’s business strategy, we, the parents, have to go through this episode once in every couple of years.

I had a chat with few of my friends the other day. It seems that they have the same thing going on at home. Finally,we came up with a hypothesis that these new era kids need these gadgets or tools to keep up appearances with their peers. Their peer pressure in the same slice of segmentation has evolved tremendously compared to what we had gone through last time. No doubt, by letting our children play these games help them to stimulate their visual and mental reflects. But at the end of the day, the effect is yet to be discussed. (Or did I miss that one? :P)

Last time, someone having a BMX bicycle or a ‘game and watch’ would be the most famous fellow in school or in the neighbourhood. Still, that did not cost that guy’s parents a fortune to pay! Imagine paying thousands for these new nannies of the century! Yup, that’s what I decided to call these gadgets. The new nannies!

Nowadays, more children tend to be spending more time indoors with these gadgets compared to be having quality outdoor activities. However, on a brighter note, with the increase of child kidnapping cases these days, I guess, parents are left with no choice but to encourage our children to stay indoors. Nevertheless, without realising it, we are actually growing a new bunch of couch potatoes. No wonder the statistics of obese children had risen up tremendously as the years passed.

So, parents, are we prepared to be hustled by the latest breed of salesmen, our own kids?