Last night a friend and I were discussing The Compacters—that group of friends who for one year agreed not to buy anything new. My friend thought it was an example of extremism—sure, you want your footprint to be as small as possible, but continually denying yourself can’t be a good thing. Is there a happy medium, we wondered, between buying nothing and buying everything?
This made me think of when Lucy was first born. Chris and I knew we wanted to raise her with as few toys as possible. And the toys she did have would be made of natural materials—no plastic—and come without batteries. But how did we tell people this? Doing so seemed at best mildly impolite; at worst, demanding.
We decided one way to get around it was to forgo the typical baby shower and have guests bring their favorite childhood book. It was so much fun to see everyone’s choice! 
And, barring one extra Where the Wild Things Are, we had no duplicates. The books were passed around, read, marveled over and stories were told. The night went off without a hitch! Now that Lucy is a year and a half and really enjoying reading, it’s been so much fun to open a book and think of the person who gave it to her.
As far as the other stuff goes, so far no one has seemed to mind the fact that we put ‘stipulations’ on gift-giving. For me, it’s more than a lifestyle choice. I think raising children without all the trappings that fly off the shelves of Toys-R-Us is one way to teach responsibility: for the planet as well as a child's own well-being. That last thing I would wish for Lucy is for her to develop a sense of ‘want’ that in turn, created a void within herself she might never be able to fill.
I hope it works!
That was brilliant!!!!
My mother makes me feel bad for "demanding" no plastic and less wasteful choices, but I'm sticking to my instincts. I love love the book idea.
Posted by: J | August 08, 2007 at 02:34 PM