My nine-year-old daughter Hannah asks: “Can we get a PlayStation3 for
our birthday?” I patiently explain how Mummy and Daddy do not believe in
gaming consoles.
The kids have cable TV, the internet, PC games, Tama-gotchis and other gear
and can barely sit still and read for 20 minutes.
“How can you not believe in something that millions of people own?” asks
Asher, 12, our resident logician and mathematician. “Do you mean you don’t
believe the PlayStation exists, like you don’t believe in the tooth fairy?
Or do you mean you want your children to be practically the only ones in the
whole town who don’t own a gaming console and can’t join in probably 50 per
cent of the normal conversations that happen with other, normal kids with
normal mums and dads?”
“Yeah!” says Barak, who is also 9. Jared, Barak and Hannah are triplets. “Why
are we the only ones who don’t have GameCube or Xbox? Why? Why are you and
Mummy so mean?”
Barak’s jaw quivers as he drives himself towards tears. “How come we can’t get
a convertible?” adds Jared, the third triplet.
I cannot fathom why the kids are suddenly anxious about our lack of a
high-priced sports car, especially since, with six in the family, we
couldn’t even ride in one together.
“You never took us to Disney World, either!” Hannah says.
“Or Hawaii,” Jared says. “We’d be willing to overlook a lot of that if we just
had one PlayStation,” Asher says. “I could show you a web-site that has free
shipping.”
I stare at my oldest child and feel the countervailing waves of pride and
exhaustion crash over me. If Asher plays his cards right, he could grow up
and negotiate peace treaties. Or run a religious cult.
“This conversation is over,” I say. “No, it’s not,” Asher says. “You can’t
just blow us off. It’s bad enough you’re already depriving us of a normal
childhood.”
The four kids chant, “We want a PlayStation, not a mean Daddy,” and I shut the
TV off. I don’t want them gathering statistics about the number of American
households that own gaming consoles and how they are suffering from a
pathologically out-of-touch family environment that will retard them
socially and emotionally for the rest of their lives.
How much is enough and how much is too much? The children in our social circle
have bowling alleys in their basements and trek across Nepal during the
February winter break. We have floods and mice in our basement and we trek
to the school playground to go sledding.
Many of our peers live in 20,000 sq ft houses decorated like museums of modern
art. We live in a fixer-upper house that will not reach its potential until
my wife and I rest comfortably 6ft below ground.
Our friends have interior designers, personal chefs, personal trainers, maids,
cooks, au pairs, full-time cleaning women. We have a cat that weighs 15lb.
Paradoxically, the kids are keenly aware that our work-ing-class babysitter
owns a 42in HDTV and thus conclude that our ageing, 25in regular old TV is a
clear sign of social dementia and parental abuse.
I sympathise with their distress. I’m a middle-aged married man who does not
own a sports car, keep a mistress or disappear on drunken holidays with my
mates. The fact that I don’t watch American football games on a plasma TV is
still a mystery, given that I’m the breadwinner and am technically free to
buy whatever I want.
Of course, freedom in a marriage is like freedom in an East European democracy
— you still need permission to exercise it.
My wife, Roni, has browbeaten me into worrying that we are living too high on
the hog and that our children are losing their moral values, despite our
obvious status at the bottom of our local socio-economic ladder.
Pushing the guiltbutton is a sound strategy because I am a naturally guilty
person who feels vaguely responsible for natural disasters and missing pets.
So instead of feeling guilty that my children have never flown in an
aeroplane, I worry that they are being spoiled, even though any conceivable
overindulgence is occurring through proximity to wealth, like secondhand
smoke, and has nothing to do with our actual living circumstances.
“The kids are obsessed with the TV and the computer,” Roni argues. She is
watching a murder mystery on TV and using the laptop computer to order junk
from Amazon.com that we don’t need.
“But it’s all on sale,” she says, when I point out the hypocrisy. In my wife’s
mind, a sale is a sacred thing, like a blessing, and should never be
denigrated or allowed to slip away.
“I never pay full price for anything,” Roni says. “Do you want me to collect
$1,500 (£760) Marc Jacobs purses, like Lori and Marci?”
“Do you want me to buy a sports car and find a mistress?”
“It wouldn’t hurt you to get out of the house a little more,” she responds.
The world of my childhood is a remote planet in relation to the world of my
children. Many of my happiest memories come from books. I begged my mother
to let me read in bed until I fell asleep. I also loved comic books and
horror movies and science-fiction television shows and baseball cards, but
there was much less of it to consume.
Now, when I announce the start of the nightly reading hour, instead of 30
minutes of quiet bliss what transpires is 60 tortured minutes of whining,
complaining, lying, the inexplicable loss of books and suddenly-recalled
homework chores that involve burrowing through the kitchen and finding snack
food.
The children see reading time as a painful burden rather than as a private
treasure, and I in part blame the 24/7 media assault as well as the soccer
practice, music lessons, religious school, gardening club, book club, play
dates.
There is too much stimulus, too much action, too much decision making, too
many choices. Too many channels. And not enough childhood.
My childhood weekends were spent with my friends. We disappeared for hours, on
foot and on bike, exploring streams, chasing frogs, breaking into abandoned
barns, crossing major streets, throwing stones at each other, stealing
comics, lying in the grass in our bare feet and staring at the clouds. There
were no schedules or obligations and no parents to supervise us. Today such
oversight would generate criminal charges.
And so the three defining aspects of my childhood — oceans of reading time,
unlimited and unstructured play, and the benign indifference of all parents
— are alien concepts to my chil- dren. “Can we get iPods for our birthday?”
Hannah asks, again.
“Not until you’re 11,” I explain.
“But Asher got one when he was 9,” Jared and Barak chime in. “Asher gets
everything because he’s older!”
“And he’s your favourite,” Hannah says.
“You idiots have so much more stuff than I do!” Asher shoots back.
“Asher lost his mobile phone and a Game Boy and we never got a Game Boy and he
was 7 and Julia is giving Grace an iPod and she’s younger than us and Julia
is Mummy’s best friend and you don’t care about us!” Barak says.
The others join the attack, the polyglot of data and evidence pouring out
faster than their angry brains can process the information.
“See, he called us idiots and he breaks all the rules and spits on us!” Hannah
shouts.
I explain that Asher earned an iPod and cellphone when he started middle
school. What follows is another impossibly convoluted and hysterical
five-way accusathon in which I am sandbagged from every direction. Out of
pure desperation and confusion they begin to belittle and sabotage one
another.
“Let’s go out for ice-cream,” I interrupt.
“You can’t bribe us into ignoring how mean you are,” Asher says.
“Can we have hot fudge?” Barak says. Once in a while child psychology works,
but you can never count on it.
In the boring old minivan the kids discuss school gossip and tease each other
about fictional bodily dysfunctions. The radio blares a Creedence Clearwater
Revival song from 1969, which I remember vividly, as a music-obsessed
nine-year-old. I still have the LP in my dusty collection, which I cannot
play because I am too guilty to buy a stereo system.
The kids tuck in to their child-sized cups of ice-cream and thankfully fail to
notice the two other kids who share a monstrous, 15-scoop sundae that could
feed a village.
My kids have good moral values, relatively speaking. If I were 9 I would die
for an iPod. And the iPod would eliminate ten or 12 junkier presents that
will end up in the garbage. And maybe they will learn to sit quietly, listen
to music, and read. My enthusiasm for the idea slackens when the dark side
of my brain reminds me of the discussion required with Roni. My body sags
under the psychic weight of this looming confrontation.
I consider distracting her with a gift of antique silver earrings, or a spa
day, or an evening out with her girlfriends Marci, Julia and Angela, each of
whom could be recruited to say something positive about their family’s iPod
experience. The women already feel that Roni is far too strict and
controlling, an opinion they can share openly without fear of nuclear
marital retaliation.
Bruce Stockler is a PR consultant and the author of I Sleep at Red
Lights: A True Story of Life After Triplets
