By Dr. Kalman Heller, Child and Family Psychologist
What Doo-Wop Music Taught Me About Holiday Gifts
A while back I was watching one of public TV’s pledge drives, and one of the big incentives for donating was a video of doo-wop music from the ’50s and early ’60s. Along with a lot of my favorite songs, they showed old news clips calling it “the devil’s music” and calling for it to be banned because of the harm it was supposedly doing to teenagers. I remember that as a pretty conformist time, when most of us did what we were told and rarely pushed back on what was expected of us. Showcasing how to choose holiday gifts for kids, is always a fun time. That got me thinking about the generation actually raising kids today, Millennials, who grew up with their own set of moral panics. They were told violent video games would turn them into killers, that social media and constant messaging would wreck their attention spans and social skills, that the internet would leave them dangerously exposed to strangers. By now you may be wondering what any of this has to do with holiday gifts. Bear with me.
Every Generation Panics About Something New
It’s a time-honored tradition for each generation of teenagers to take up some new activity that adults find alarming, and for the adults to blame individual tragedies on whatever the trendy cultural influence happens to be. In the psychologizing of America, we’ve stretched that idea of social influence all the way back to prenatal experience. The net effect is that parents agonize even more over every choice they make and how it might damage their kids. If you let your daughter buy into the “Sephora kids” skincare trend, you’re warned you’re increasing her odds of body image issues or an eating disorder. If you buy your son a violent video game, you’re warned you’re increasing his odds of committing a violent crime. If only life were that simple.
We Can’t Actually Predict Who’s at Risk
Eating disorders are a real concern in our society, and so is male violence. But these are complicated problems, and our ability to predict which specific child will develop one is close to nonexistent. For decades, millions of young girls have spent countless hours with Barbie dolls, and boys have been exposed to steadily more violent media in every format. We take eating disorders and violence seriously, as we should, but the fact remains that the vast majority of women never develop an eating disorder, and the vast majority of men never commit a violent crime. What any individual does is a complicated mix of temperament, brain chemistry, personal experience, and social influence, all interacting at once. And struggling significantly in childhood or adolescence doesn’t doom someone’s adult life either. People are remarkably resilient. It’s worth pointing out that the generation warned it would be ruined by video games and the internet grew up to become the most educated generation in American history, driving real innovation in technology and small business, and pushing forward real progress on inclusion. That’s you I’m talking about, the majority of today’s parents. Oxford University’s research backs this up too, finding no measurable link between violent video games and adolescent aggression.
Let Your Values Guide the Gift, Not the Panic
So when you’re out buying holiday gifts this year, I’d urge you to worry less about the current doomsayers and more about your own values. Too many parents get confused and overwhelmed by all the advice that people like me keep sending their way. It’s genuinely hard to sort out what actually matters. For a long time now, I’ve told parents that what really matters is building a close bond with your kids, learning to enjoy them and see their strengths even when that’s genuinely hard with a particular child. I also encourage parents to know what they actually believe and to give their kids some consistency by being willing to take the heat for standing behind their own values. Your daughter can absolutely own the skincare set, but if you think the packaging or marketing crosses a line, say no. Certain video games might cross a line for you too, whether it’s the level of violence or the values embedded in them. Say no to those as well.
What Kids Actually Remember
If any of this resonates, it follows that you should buy gifts you find acceptable for your kids, gifts that become part of a holiday experience with real personal meaning for your family rather than a fleeting material one. Very few adults remember their specific childhood holiday gifts years later. Warm holiday memories are almost always built from a sense of tradition, the sights and sounds and smells tied to a feeling of family closeness. That closeness matters more than any specific gift ever could, and if you’re building it, your holidays are already meaningful. It’s also, as it happens, the single strongest factor in the odds that your children will grow up to make healthy decisions in their own lives.
