I know I’m late on this comment, but I feel so strongly about it – parents influence peer pressure in a way that is often unrecognized!

Completely agreed! We’ve followed these suggestions, and they make a HUGE difference in our lives. As a family, we’ve always had a more minimalistic approach to living, buying only what we truly need, and thinking about why we are heading out to go shopping in the first place, so we aren’t side-tracked by the horrible amounts of marketing out there.

Turning off the TV makes a huge difference. My husband and I bought our first TV last Christmas so we could have a movie night at home, but we’ve gone the last 7 years without one. I haven’t missed it in the least. We still refuse to purchase cable tv, and I honestly can’t think of any reason why we would. Our girls are 2.5 and almost 6 and they’ll watch the occasional movie on weekends, but it’s just not part of what they do each day. When we travel and they watch tv with commercials I seriously can’t stand listening to them day in and day out. The commercials drive me crazy!

Even without TV I get plenty of opportunity to talk with my oldest about commercialism and marketing. She sees the flyers that come in the mail, the magazines at the grocery store, and other children with character clothing and backpacks. We’ve had lots of conversations around why mommy doesn’t buy anything with Dora on it. It’s an ongoing process, but my hope is that by leading an example of not needing to ‘keep up with Jones’, my children have less to struggle with when they are older. It’s hard work when you have debt, too much crap and a a home cluttered with stuff!

A great post (and blog) on the subject is http://mnmlist.com/minimalist-faqs/. Clearing our lives of ‘stuff’ has definitely been a process for us as a family (and we’re still not entirely there yet) but it’s so freeing, empowering and quite simply, calming, once you get there.

I’ve talked with other “come from aways” and while we are all going through “NO IKEA????” shock – you get over it! We all noticed that our kids MELLOWED OUT on the “I wants” too.

Everyone here shops at “Frenchy’s” for kid clothes – it’s like an uber cheap Value Village chain. We don’t have a tv and I know that affects things, but my kids don’t live in a culture that even has malls to hang out at! They don’t see billboards, they don’t see many big chains (let me tell you these was a BAND playing when WINNERS opened a store in the shopping mecca of the valley two towns over). The peer pressure, the marketers pressure just isn’t as intense because we don’t live in a culture that supports that level of consumerism. This applies to our 16 year old as much as the 9 and 5 year olds.

We all feel assaulted by the advertisers as soon as we hit about Quebec City (driving between Nova Scotia and Ottawa for the holidays). The number of ads, the storefronts, it all seems surreal and plastic and fake and very DISNEYOUTLANDISH once you’ve been away from it for awhile.

So, I think we have a choice in this, without being counter culture..marginalization has its perks!