Mom in the advent calendar trap: "So much money for so much crap!"
On average, three years after the birth of their first child, parents fall into the advent calendar trap: "Now our child is so big, would not it be nice to give him an advent calendar?"
This idea is not based on the assumption that the child would be missing something without an advent calendar. It springs from the need to spice up the tiring day-to-day life of children with events that have the label "New!" Earn: The parents imagine how the already big child will jump out of bed with sparkling eyes morning after tomorrow and run to the advent calendar. Three minutes later, after receiving the first advent calendar, the still small child rolls wildly screaming on the floor because it can not unpack all 24 surprises immediately. I know that from my own experience.
Instead of sweets, there are flummis, marbles, tattoos ...
Mostly it is the mothers who introduce the advent calendar. And because in the realm of good mothers "self-made" is synonymous with "exemplary", many mothers make the advent calendar themselves.
Home-made advent calendars have to be filled by yourself. Because parents of first-born three-year-olds are still full of good intentions, for example, "The child should not snack so much!", They never fill the first Advent calendar exclusively with sweets. Instead, they roam through inner cities in search of sugar-free miniature toys: flummis, marbles, whistles, gyros, tattoos, bathwater dye tablets.
Two years later, the smallest toy is boring
The child is delighted, the standard set, the disaster takes its course: Two Advent calendars later, the child is no longer quite so delighted. Excited, it unpacks the smallest toy and throws it bored in the corner. Three Advent calendars later, the mother finally thinks: Maybe some sweets, at least in the mouth, instead of clogging the nursery.
About the fourth year after the Advent calendar was introduced, the mother says, "Child, this year's only sweets!" The child, meanwhile at school, screams: "No, not only sweets, only sweets are boring!"
The mother, mildly tuned by the knowledge to have nourished the expectation of the child, thinks: Well, then at least something useful. The mother moves through inner cities in search of useful little things: pencil sharpener, eraser, glitter pins.
The gifts are getting more and more expensive
In the sixth year - the child owns three pencil sharpeners, four erasers, ten glitter pens - the mother buys sweets, a mini flashlight, a magnet, a kaleidoscope, calculates what she has spent filling the Advent calendar, and turns pale: so much Money for so much crap!
Then rather something right to play. In the year seven she buys a Playmobil package and distributes the contents to 24 parcels. In the year eight, the mother consults with a friend, the girlfriend says: "Luis is just so crazy about telling jokes, I've bought a children's joke book, he gets every day a note with a new joke!" The mother is impressed, but can not possibly imagine how to survive the Advent period as the mother of a ten-year-old child who learns a new joke every day. Children who have learned a new joke want to tell it too, one after the other so often that one would like to cry at some point.
The mother buys again a Playmobil package. And then, someday, on a gray November morning, she wakes up and thinks: Maybe I should spend a euro every day. Why did not I just buy a chocolate calendar back then?
