Today, my 18 year old niece's facebook status read "♥ broke my phone again -_- # 7 in less than a year, God just does not want me to have the htc evo, fine God ill settle for the iphone 4s ;)".  As I read it, it hit me!  We really did create a generation of wastefull, careless, totally oblivious individuals.

I grew up being taught the value of a dollar.  My parents did have money, but my father, coming from a poor hard working, partly Italian family, was very cautious with it.  He piled it.  Every penny was wisely spent and not a dime was wasted. 

My mother was the complete opposite.  She too, had come from a poor family, but she had a different reaction when put in front of some of her own: she wanted to enjoy it.  And she wanted to give me all she didn't have.  This created a very tense situation every Christmas as my mom wanted to buy, buy, buy and my dad wanted to limit, limit, limit.  Christmas to my mom was about giving and  to my dad, it was about damage control.

I am my father's daughter and every Christmas, the issue of money gets in between my husband and I.  He is like my mother.  He wants to give all he can to the kids, no matter what the price is.  I want to be more, shall we say, conservative, especially when I see things like my what my niece posted on her facebook status today.  Over the years, my husband and I have wasted thousands of dollars in trying to make the kids happy. And the fact of the matter is:  material things do not make them happy.

I know, it's cliché, but kids today do not pay attention to their things.  They do not care for their toys.  They grew up in a world who tells them that everything is replaceable and that if it brakes, they will just get another one.  And parents are partly the cause of this.  If they brake their game boy, we buy them another one.  If they brake their cell phone, we replace it.  We do it  because we do not want them to be singled out at school and not to have what every single one of their friends have.  But I think we also do it to make up for all the time we do not spend with them.

Parents spoil their kids.  I see it all around.  It's not just my family.  Every Christmas, the credit card companies make a killing.  A lot of us get into debt to buy our kids toys that end up broken or discarded.  And I'm not talking small five dollar gifts here.  I'm talking big money.  This is not only  teaching them the wrong values, but also setting them up for failure.

We have to think about what's going to happen when they are out on their own and can't afford what they set their eyes own.  Do we really want them to start their adult life with thousands of dollars in debt because we taught them that they need to have everything they want, the moment they want it?  No. 

We need to teach them that they will not get an iphone 4 if they break their HTC phone.  And we need to do it after one time, not 7.  We also need to give them what they really want: our time.  How to you spell LOVE to a child?  Like this: T-I-M-E.