The Buck Stops Here: SouthFlorida.com

When Shari Graham's family embarks on a shopping trip, a battle often ensues, with her 7-year-old daughter Mackenzie aiming straight for the heart. "We'll walk into a store and she'll ask me if we can go to the toy section," says the Coconut Creek mom, who also has a 9-month-old son. "I say, yes we can look. But as soon as we get to the section, she starts with, 'I want that! Oh, can I have that? I want that Barbie.' I feel bad saying no to her."

Mackenzie knows what she wants because she watches TV a couple of hours daily.

"She doesn't watch a lot of TV, but she watches the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon and she always sees things she wants in the commercials," says Graham. "As it gets closer to the holidays, it gets even harder. I remember when commercials used to be made to get a parent's attention. But now they're made to get kids' attention so they'll ask their parents to buy the product for them.

"I always call my daughter a prisoner of marketing."

Common cents

Indeed, according to Juliet B. Schor's unnerving new book, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (Scribner, $25), children are at the center of a multibillion-dollar advertising and marketing juggernaut that has grown increasingly insidious.

"The amount of direct marketing to kids has been greatly expanded in recent years," says Schor, a Boston College sociology professor and mom of two kids, ages 9 and 13. "Advertisers are using the 'nag factor' model, targeting kids who then ask their parents to buy the products. They are using stealthy advertising, targeting kids where they are outside the control of their parents," in schools and after-school programs.

At the same time, more parents are allowing their children to direct family purchases than ever before. "I find that a lot of parents are very indulgent in their children," says Mo Deutsch, a licensed mental health counselor based in Plantation. "They're buying them whatever they want."

Reasons abound for this extravagance, Deutsch says. Many adults who feel they were deprived when they were children shower their kids with whatever they desire. Other parents have more discretionary income than they have time to spend with their children, indulging them to staunch parental guilt. Others just don't know how to say, "No."

"Some parents just want to be their child's buddy instead of their guide," Deutsch says. "A mom who came in yesterday with her 14-year-old daughter asked if it would be appropriate to buy her daughter a tongue ring. The mother didn't want her daughter not to like her or think that she was un-hip." The daughter, Deutsch says, was testing her boundaries. Now she knows her mom's a pushover.

Lisa Seeman of Lauderhill believes many of the members of her South Florida Moms and Cutie Patooties group use buying as a balm for the pressures of today's uncertain world. "Parents are so stressed these days, they tend to give in more to their children," she says.

But catering to children's whims can harm them in the long run, says Schor. After surveying 300 Massachusetts children ages 10-13 from various socioeconomic and racial backgrounds, she found that immersion in consumer culture can lead to everything from stomachaches to depression.

"The more exposure children have to marketing and advertising, the more likely they are to be caught up in the values of a consumer culture: to care about how much stuff they have, want things they don't have, care about labels, never feel satisfied and so forth," says Schor. "This leads them to become more depressed, more anxious and to have lower self-esteem." And materialistic kids tend not to recognize real sources of joy and optimism in their lives.

Taking back childhood

With conviction, parents can prevent their families from falling into the marketing mousetrap. Schor suggests eliminating - or at least limiting - TV time, for starters, but also recommends parents find out what's happening at their children's schools and extracurricular programs and join with other concerned parents to make changes.

Teaching children to be critical of new products also can bolster them against advertisers' ploys, Seeman says. "I'll tell my son to go over to a toy, hold it, touch it and see what it does," she says. "Most of the time he realizes it's just because everyone else wants it that he wants it, and after playing with it for a minute, he'll put it down." If her son shows genuine interest in something, Seeman tells Robbie, 3, she'll put it on his holiday list - but only if she sees educational value in the toy. Most importantly, she says, she's in control.

Andrea Gerhoff of Lake Worth gets her little guy in gear for dreaded December by taking the focus off what he'll receive and emphasizing what he can give to others. She involves him in setting aside toys for a children's shelter. "He's really into it," says Gerhoff, whose son will turn 4 a week before Christmas. "We have two big boxes and he puts a lot in them."

Despite her efforts, Gerhoff says it's unrealistic to think parents can shield their kids completely from consumer culture. "You can't put your kids in a bubble," she says. Instead of blaming advertisers for selling their products, Gerhoff thinks parents should go on the offensive and "explain what a commercial is and ask their children what they think of the product and the way they're selling it," she says. "You have to teach them that they can look at commercials and not have what's in them."

No matter how well parents educate their children about advertising and marketing, some kids will still find reasons to beg. Ruth Kraft of Palm Beach Gardens asserts that respecting children's wishes is different from giving in to them. "My children will throw tantrums sometimes and I just say, 'I understand you're frustrated and hurt, but you're not going to get what you want,'" says Kraft, whose kids are 3 and 4. "Sometimes life is unfair."

Teaching her daughter about budgeting by allotting her $2 a week allows Graham to illustrate why her daughter can't have everything she wants. But Graham recognizes that sometimes she has to be the "bad guy" to prepare her daughter for the future. "Sometimes I feel guilty saying no when she asks for toys," she says. "But I would rather have her scream at me and make a scene at the store than see her grow up spoiled and sad when she doesn't get what she wants."

Never too late

Even if parents have allowed a pattern of blind consumerism to develop within their families, Deutsch says, they don't have to continue on that paralytic path.

"I don't think it's ever too late to change," she says. "Parents can always say, 'Things are going to change and this is why.'" But parents must recognize that family dynamics don't transform overnight.

"There is no quick fix or magic pill," says Deutsch. "When you want to lose weight, you have to work out, eat right and little by little, see a change. It is the same with teaching that materialism doesn't buy happiness."

Angela Rodriguez of Coral Gables has already uncovered her parenting weaknesses - and begun to unravel them. Rodriguez used to race to Toys "R" Us every time her daughters, who are approaching 2 and 3 years old, showed interest in a product advertised in a TV commercial.

"One would see an Elmo doll and go 'Wow,' and I'd think, 'Oh, maybe this will work for her and keep her entertained,'" she says. "But she has two or three Elmos now and she only paid attention to them for a while before she was like, 'Whatever.'" Now, instead of heaps of toys, she buys her daughters puzzles, coloring books and finger-paint sets to encourage them to think and to use their imaginations. "I still feel like I always have to entertain them or they get cranky, but at least now they can color for an hour," she says. "They get sick of a toy in 15 minutes."

Cara Nissman is a freelance youth and family reporter based in West Palm Beach.