mr. mom

Sources & Uses: Non-Traditional Outlets for Kid Stuff

Being a parent shopping for children's “necessities” like miniature shopping carts or  doll houses can make one feel a bit like an unwitting tourist falling victim to a rapidly changing foreign exchange market. I mean, come on... does miniature plastic fruit really warrant a $69.95 price tag? I recently purchased a build-it-yourself dollhouse. The dolls and miniature furniture to fill it cost almost as much as our real life-sized dining room set.

I ’ve now been finding it very useful to source child-oriented products from non-traditionally child-themed stores.  The impetus for this was my original qualm with paying $8 for what felt like a notebook's-worth of paper that was so narrow, my daughter and her friends couldn’t avoid drawing and painting on the craft table it was intended to cover... and the quality was akin to that of the roll of tissue-paper masquerading as an impenetrable germ barrier protecting our children's naked bodies on doctors' examination tables.

This is a copy of an email I sent to my play-date posse:

FYI for those of you with easels or craft tables: 

HP 24"x150 print rolls are approx 3xs the paper, wider, better quality and

less expensive (even with taking shipping into consideration) per sqft than the Melissa&Doug or ALEX-like brands out there…and require less frequent roll changes.

See below.

Regards,

Josh

Keep Calm

and

Carry On


Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry

Subject: Your Order with Amazon.com

Thanks for your order, J.Sapienza!

Want to manage your order online?
If you need to check the status of your order or make changes, please visit our home page at Amazon.com and click on Your Account at the top of any page.

Purchasing Information:

Order Grand Total: $50.12

Get the Amazon.com Rewards Visa Card and get $30 instantly as anAmazon.com Gift Card.

Order Summary:

Your purchase has been divided into 3 orders.

Order #1 : (order will arrive in 1 shipment)

Order #:

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Shipping Method:

Standard Shipping

Items:  

$14.25

Shipping & Handling:  

$9.12

------

Total Before Tax:  

$23.37

Estimated Tax To Be Collected:*  

$0.00

------

Order Total:  

$23.37

1

"HP Bright White Inkjet Paper (24 Inches x 150 Feet Roll)"
Office Product; $14.25
In Stock
   Sold by: Amazon.com

Order #2 : Shoplet

Order #:

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Shipping Method:

Standard

Items:  

$11.72

Shipping & Handling:  

$5.29

------

Total Before Tax:  

$17.01

Estimated Tax To Be Collected:*  

$0.00

------

Order Total:  

$17.01

1

"HP Universal Bond Paper (24 Inches x 150 Feet Roll)"
Office Product; $11.72
In Stock
   Sold by: Shoplet

Order #3 : Essex Technology Group

Order #:

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Shipping Method:

Standard

Items:  

$9.74

Shipping & Handling:  

$0.00

------

Total Before Tax:  

$9.74

Estimated Tax To Be Collected:*  

$0.00

------

Order Total:  

$9.74

1

"HP Recycled Bond Paper, 24 Inches x 150 ft Roll (CG889A)"
Office Product; $9.74
In Stock
Sold by: Essex Technology Group

Micromanagement: Are We Hovering Too Much?

IMG-20120415-01248.jpg

The October 2012 issue of Psychology Today ran a feature written by Elizabeth Svoboda : “Lessons for Living: Five Surprising Principles for Living, Loving and Playing with Others. http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201208/lessons-living.

The most interesting and relevant to me as a dad who wants to ensure that my wife and I are exercising a healthy amount of concern and protection was “Lesson #2: The Beauty of Benign Neglect” which discusses the opinions of relationship expert Michelle Givertz (California State University, Chico) and Hara Estroff Marano (author of A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting). They discuss the fact that… “ It’s more harmful to overparent than underparent.”

Although I don’t see us as “helicopter parents” (and sure most helicopter parents wouldn’t see themselves as such) I think it bears keeping in mind for any parent this thought: “By not letting kids stumble over little things, parents prevent them from developing coping skills… without [these coping skills] kids don’t develop a sense of mastery and self-confidence”

The nub of the article is this: “Practicing benign neglect with your children is like inoculation…stepping back, giving kids the chance to recognize that you’re there for them even when you’re not hitched to their side, that they’re capable of picking themselves up when they fall down-is the only way they’ll internalize the strength of the parental bond and a sense of their own competence.”

There is a difference between "over-management" (i.e, managing details neglected by others) vs. "micro-management" (i.e, managing every step of every process and the minutia in between".