Originally posted on NYC Mom Blogs April 12, 2010
This month is my daughter's seventh birthday. For the last year and a half, she has been begging for a Nintendo DS. And why is that? Because literally, everyone in her peer group has one, so she, of course has to have one. Personally, I don't have an issue with having any of the latest gadgets, good god, I would love nothing better than to have all the latest gaming systems in my home so I could play with them.
My issue is that it's one more thing that I have to negotiate with my daughter - playing time as a reward for good behavior or a taking it away as consequence for not so great behavior. It's all so exhausting, right.
So to stave off buying a DS as long as I could, I told my daughter that she could get one for her seventh birthday if she saved up her allowance. A couple of months ago, she decided to count her allowance money and was disappointed that she wasn't even close to her goal. Over the next few weeks leading up to her birthday, she would say in her little voice, almost in tears, "I wonder what I am going to get for my birthday since I don't have enough money to buy the DS."
Knowing she wasn't even close to having enough money, I could have easily decided not to buy the DS and I am sure she would have accepted it but I just could not disappoint her so I bought the darn thing. I just couldn't bear to see her sad little face on her birthday. More importantly, I had no back up gift.
To say that she was thrilled to receive the DS is an understatement. As I was relieved that we had finally reached the technological mountain top, I realized that some of her classmates are now getting the iPod touch for their birthdays.
And so with that, my daughter and I will have to accept that we will never be early adopters of technology and call it day.
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