Raising An Aware Child Consumer – Developing Consumer Awareness

The task of raising an aware child consumer is not for the fainthearted. However, it provides excellent training for parents, and a solid foundation for today’s targeted and commercially exploited children.

Feeling inadequate? Never mind, I’m right up there with you. I’ve been learning lessons from my little cousin this Summer. My almost-7-year-old cousin Shellaine is quite a teacher of profound lessons.

Child consumer is the term used to describe the status of a child in marketing as a purchaser and consumer of commercial products. Some persons are still of the orientation that children as buyers, are insignificant in the market-place. They feel children have no spending power. In order to reach children they target parents.

This group reminds me of those churches, including some of us Baptists, who have no idea of the priceless contribution children make to the congregation. These churches overlook children and spend money instead on developing programs for adults (mostly elderly). I believe that children are overlooked because they are viewed by these churches as having no income and therefore won’t make much contribution to the offering. Hmmm…

Invest in and invite children to come, provide programs for them and watch and see where their parents go. Parents with young children and teens are far more likely to attend a church with a vibrant children and youth ministry. I wonder why….

Over the past 40 years or so, another section of sellers in retail marketing recognized that children today have more spending money than children before them. They also realize that children influence their parents buying decisions. Retailers who caught on to this reality, have been aggressively marketing to kids. Targeting children in the marketplace has created a new kind of consumerism, and is already shaping a new generation for an increasing global consumerist society.

We need to help our children and youth develop consumer awareness skills. These skills would come in handy for making wise spending decisions. The challenge lies in teaching these skills. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to teach what you do not know.

Parents or caregivers of children who are aware consumers should find it easier to pass these lessons on to their children. Although, I have to admit that I have seen aware parents leave their children to make poor spending choices with ‘their’ pocket money. It is also possible to transmit your awareness to your children without even being conscious of doing so. The example of my cousin, reflects both a deliberate effort on our part as well as indirect influence.

There is only one fly in the ointment. A ‘much too aware’ child is a real…uummm, challenge? Before I tell you the rest of the story, answer me this. Have you ever received one of those forwarded emails with sayings by kids and you believed some idle adult sat down and made it up? Did you snort and say ‘yea right’..after you finished reading every last cute saying? You have? Well in one of those emails you would have met a child like Shellaine.

She is what we Jamaicans call ‘womanish’ a term also used in the African-american community. This same word is the root of ‘Womanist’, a word developed by Alice Walker in In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: Womanist Prose. It is from this that we get ‘Womanist Theology’. Ok back to Shellaine the aware child consumer.

She gives me what I call Dubli moments (By the way, the European company Dubli is the hottest thing since Ebay!). I’ve thought of putting her up for auction at Dubli several times. I had one such moment yesterday when I called home and she asked me if I wrote her Blog story yet.

Raising an aware child consumer is one thing, living with one is another. Please read Shellaine’s story tomorrow about her ‘having a thing’ with products made in China.

Become aware,
Marvia