Barbie mania

Hi all,
This is my first experience rather say a daring step in blogging. Don’t know how much I am going to satisfy you but confident enough that it won’t be much disappointing to you.


Coming to my story, as you all are well aware of the fact that this generation kids are more fascinated with Barbie character and my loved ones are in no way exception from this and that too as they are girls they are a bit little more affected by this fascination. They are fascinated so much a way that even if they see a ragged paper also if it has a Barbie sticker on it, they want to keep it with them. Because of this love for Barbie they were possessed with some collections of Barbie dolls, Barbie stickers, Barbie story books, Barbie CDs, etc, etc.

As myself and my DH took it for granted that it’s a quite natural instinct in children to have such fancies which may seem silly to our elders sometimes. Hence we will be trying to fulfil their desires almost but always manage it to be in limits.

My elder one is sooo fancied with Barbie that she wanted to have a Barbie dress of her own. As a result two pretty long frocks which mimic with the Barbie dresses have been granted for our two loving daughters. Now you will be thinking that why for the younger one also. We are really spoiling them by doing so. But as you all know that the younger ones in the house are naturally possessed with a quality of following the footsteps of their elder ones. Obviously my little one is also blessed with this beautiful character and so she too wanted one. As a result we had to get two instead of one.

One day my DH got a mail from his higher officials saying that he needed to work onsite for a project and has to leave for Australia. So when it was revealed at home, after so many discussions it has been decided that my DH will be leaving for Australia first and myself and kids will be joining him later. My DH left to Australia and after a small gap we also got to join him.

As myself and kids are leaving for Australia and my elder one’s birthday is a month ahead, her grandmother wanted to buy a new dress for her birthday and present it to her. As this thought is put in front of my DD, she demanded for a new Barbie dress as her old one is being little tighter these days. Obviously you know that my little one always loves to be in the footsteps of her elder sis just like Laxmana being with Rama. So both of them have been gifted with two beautiful dresses of their like.

We finally came to Australia and joined my DH. My DDs got were presented with two small DVDs by his dad as they were joining him after a long gap. They felt happy with them and wanted to enjoy their gifts by watching them. Eventually I had to provide them with their favourite Barbie CDs which I brought for them from India.

They were really very happy watching their Barbie movies on their new DVDs.

Myself and my DH were double happy as we were less bothered with their mind blowing questionnaire these days. :hide:

Now you may be wondering that, all of this is quite normal and where this bloody BARBIE MANIA came in between to bang our heads.

Actually till now everything was going on fine. But the actual trouble started from now itself.

My elder one started dancing, singing, eating, talking, dressing up and trying out new hairstyles of Barbie what not, almost living in the world of Barbie, totally occupied in mimicking the Barbie characters in every possible way she can and my younger one is always there to follow her dear sister sincerely. We were a bit worried and thinking of trying to figure out the problem until we were forced to take action seriously and immediately on this issue by our DDs.

One fine morning my elder one came to us with an obligation saying that she doesn’t like her name anymore and wanted to change her name to RAPUNZEL. My elder one adores this character of Rapunzel Barbie a lot as she has so many resemblances with her in common. She loves painting as of Rapunzel, has love for animals as of Rapunzel and most importantly she possesses a long hair just like Rapunzel (not exactly as big as Rapunzel but much bigger to her age). My elder one is really proud of having the longest hair in her entire school and is eagerly waiting for her hair to touch her feet just like Rapunzel.
After hearing this obligation we were forced to take emergency measures and after a lot of patient discussions with her we could finally convince her saying that we will be calling her as Rapunzel at home and she will be carrying her real name outside the house. Because we don’t want to really hurt her emotions and tackle the problem in a smooth manner and slowly control this so called ‘BARBIE MANIA’. As my younger one also wanted a different name at home as of her big sis we suggested her with the name,’ Dora’ (my younger one fits into this charater exactly) as she personally fancies this character also.

Then we started to conduct research on the problem and decided to stop them from watching the Barbie movies once for all.

As you all know that kids need to be bribed with more interesting thing of their like to help them in getting rid of some of their annoying habits. So we decided to apply the same technique in our case also.

We finally succeeded in doing so by slowly replacing the Barbie CDs to Tom & Jerry CDs. Kids were enjoying their Tom & Jerry CDs slowly forgetting about their ‘BARBIE MANIA’, even though they were upset initially.

We ourselves are also very happy sincerely congratulating each other on succeeding in our faithful efforts. So we had a really very good night sleep after a long gap of facing such a mental turmoil, having no clue of lots of awaiting surprises for us ahead.

As my kids were watching Tom & Jerry CDs totally forgetting about their ‘BARBIE MANIA’, they slowly started incorporating themselves into the characters of Tom & Jerry without our knowledge, elder one being Tom and younger one being Jerry. As they took these characters granted for themselves, they now started showing LIVE Tom & Jerry Show to us by chasing each other all over the house and mocking the things whichever get in their way, jumping on the beds and sofas. :bang

Now that the ‘BARBIE MANIA’ has turned into even more serious ‘MANIA of TOM & JERRY’, we were not at all patient enough to take anymore further risks. So after lots and lots of banging and scratching of our heads we finally decided now to replace the DVDs itself taking it for grant that they are the main cause for all this ‘ITCH OF MANIA’.

So again after lots and lots of patient conversations (of course a little bit less patient than in our previous efforts) we replaced the DVDs with some nice story books (NO BARBIE STORY BOOKS) thinking that their reading skills will be improving (parallelly getting rid of all the manias) and will be developing love for books, which will be of a great help in their future. So my DH bought some nice story books and gave them.

Slowly everything came under control and finally we were really happy for getting rid of all the nuisance forever.

One day I enquired my elder one out of curiosity as she was seen carrying the same book since few days.

Our conversation went on like this.

MYSELF : What is the book you are holding always these days?

MY DD : It’s a fairy tale book.

MYSELF : Is there anything special in that book and why are you reading the same book since few days?

MY DD : Actually I am trying to learn a fairy mantra.

MYSELF : What is this fairy mantra?

MY DD : In this book a fairy recites this mantra and does so many magic tricks and so I also wanted to try a magic trick by learning it.

MYSELF : Which trick you want to try?

MY DD : I want to turn myself into Rapunzel.

MYSELF :

 

Hi Sofea,
First of all let me thanks a lot for the first feed back.

I totally agree with you that this BARBIE MANIA is spreading throughout the world like a disease and it’s time for parents to be a bit more cautious and guiding the kids in a right path alluring the fancies of the loved ones within the limits.

Though I faced all the above situations in reality but not in the higher extent as I magnified to show, as I took actions on time by showing them the difference between the real and fantasy world and allowing their facies to be allured in moderation.

I just wanted to give the underlined message to the parents by magnifying some of my real life experiences and show them the result of not taking necessary precautions at right time.

Regards,
Latha.

 

Thank you Sreema for your feed back.

Yeah Very Well Understood by you to how we got to handle the problem and get it done.
Thanks alot for your blessings to my loved ones.

Regards,
Latha.

 

Yes Sudha,

Whatever you said is obsolutely right. Especially

Till some time we can encourage but that should not be carried all the time.

I was also able to convince the difference between between real and fantasy world after so much of discussions. She enjoys the Barbie movies still but came out of that fantasy. And I diverted her to some extent by asking her to watch the news and some educative channels. As they encourage in schools here also to watch the news regularly, she got convinced and now she watches news regularly and is trying to now the real world.

And thank you for your feedback.

Regards,
Latha.

 

Hi Manisha,
Thanks for your appreciation dear.

Regards,
Latha.