I’m sure you’ve all heard the saying that how you acted when you were a child will come back to haunt you in parenthood.  Well that could not be more true for me right now.  I never imagined that my three and a half year old could fall victim to a toy or clothing fad.  But boy was I wrong!  I keep having flashbacks to my childhood where I was demanding these:

Image from The 80's Museum

and these:

Any fellow child of the 80′s should recognize both of these famous trends.  I was, to put it lightly, obsessed with the plastic charm necklaces.  And the jelly bracelets (which I am just now learning signal “sexual intent” based on the color), I know that I had enough to go up and down both of my arms at the same time.  So I am not sure why it came as such a surprise to me when my three and a half year old daughter demanded that she have Silly Bandz.

For those of you who don’t know (lucky!!), Silly Bandz are basically plastic bands in that come in various shapes (animals, princess, rock band, cowboy, baseball, etc) that you wear as bracelets.  The slogan is “collect ‘em, trade ‘em, wear ‘em” and they’re being marketed as the “Hottest New Fashion Accessory”.

Anywho, somehow my daughter learned of these magnificent things and HAD TO HAVE them.  I had no idea what she was talking about when she first brought it up but I let her explain it to me and then we went to try to find them.  I wasn’t sure where to look or how much they would cost.  Yesterday we were at the mall and I tried going in to Claire’s figuring that they sell lots of brightly colored plastic jewelry.  I went in, asked the teenaged girl behind the counter and was answered with, “Ha!  Good luck finding them.  We can’t keep them on the racks!”  Ummm, ok.  Now what?  I tried, eeek, Spencer’s.  (I’m not proud that I brought my two young kids into that store, but it was a desperate measure.)  Again, no luck.  So, I told Brinley not to worry and that I was sure that we’d find her some Silly Bandz somewhere (though I highly doubted it would happen that day).  We went along with our shopping which brought us into the Hallmark Gold Crown Store.  Brinley darted ahead of me and started yelling, “SILLY BANDZ!”  There they were, a huge rack of them in all different shapes and colors.  She quickly grabbed about five packs of them and said, “Ok mom, I’m ready to go!”

I took the packs from her and my jaw nearly landed on the floor when I saw the price tag.  FIVE BUCKS for a pack of plastic animal shaped bands?  I told her that she could pick out one pack for today and we could talk about ways that she could earn additional packs.  We left the store and she had the biggest smile on her face.  She proudly put all 24 bands shaped like zoo animals on her wrist and kept going through them naming each animal.  She stopped at least 3 women as we were shopping to show off her prize.  It was really cute.

I’m sure this is just the first of many fashion fad/trends that she will become sucked in by but I really can’t believe that it’s starting at three and a half.  Do your kids have these things?  How do you handle their demands for trendy items?

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