Note: The following was written about 6 years ago. 

A couple of weeks back I bought my 13-year-old son a toy gun. I know, I know... how could I?! I suppose the short answer is that I decided to "go with the flow."

As most parents know, kids have a way of wearing us out with their demands for the doodad du jour. In this case, he wanted a toy gun. He assured me that the one he had researched and decided he wanted was made out of clear plastic and that it was capable of shooting only tiny pea-sized plastic balls.

Having given up many a battle when it comes to such urgent demands - "everyone in my class has it!" or "I will pay for it with my own money" or even "I will do chores to show you how good I can be" - I agreed to go to Sports Authority to look at what type of gun he had in mind.

I confess it felt weird to be in that section of the store. Real guns were inside locked glass cases. There was plenty of other hunter paraphernalia. As someone who has never even seen a real gun, and as someone who worries about how animals are treated and so no longer enjoys going to the zoo or the circus, I felt the way I might feel upon entering a place of ill repute.

After much discussion, I agreed to buy the gun - but I insisted that it be as unlike a real gun as possible. Even so, I felt very self-conscious at the checkout. The more so, when the clerk asked me to sign a document that stated that I was aware that I was buying a firearm. At that instant I almost walked out of the store, sans gun.

Over the two weeks since the purchase, he has played with it only when he has had a friend over - the one who also owns the same type of toy gun. At one point they tried to use a pebble (instead of the store-bought yellow plastic balls), and it promptly got stuck inside the gun. So, they used screw-drivers and pliers to take the gun apart, dislodge the pebble and try to put the gun back together again. Needless to say, at least a couple of precious hours were spent in this exercise. Since he likes working with his hands (we made 3-d jigsaw puzzles and a dollhouse from a kit when he was younger), I suspect taking it apart and putting it back together was as much fun as target practice.

Earlier the boys had tried to stack empty soda cans to make a game out of it - similar to the ones at a carnival. Turns out, the gun is so "lame" that it could not knock off empty soda cans! Finally, once the pebbles are gone, and with school about to start, the gun is about to get put away.

All in all, not a bad outcome from the purchase of an item of dubious merit.

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Interestingly, this is not the first time that I have seen a similar deflation (or repurposing) of an item's value.

When my daughter was in elementary school, having heard and read all the criticisms of the Barbie doll, I avoided buying her the dolls and also avoided buying the dolls as gifts for her friends. Attending only a few gift-opening sessions at her friends' birthday parties brought out the futility of the trouble I had been going to to find wholesome , "educational" toys and games.

The loudest oohs and aahs were heard when a Barbie gift was unwrapped. They emanated not just from the birthday girl, but from all the others as well. The girls took great joy in bragging about how many Barbies they owned - and the numbers ranged from 5 to 25! All this, while my little one had just one.

After one too many such experiences, I was a changed woman. I too started buying Barbies for my daughter and for her friends. It was not so much a desire to "keep up with the Joneses", as much as desire to help her not feel either separate or "less."

It was gratifying to note a couple of interesting phenomena after this change of course.

When a bunch of girls played together, they loved dressing up their Barbie dolls - cutting the dolls' hair was an all-time favorite activity. Changing their clothes and playing with them in the bathtub were close seconds. Along the way, the Barbies became the hedious pieces of plastic that they were underneath - not the impossibly slim glamour girls that the popluar culture was afraid the little ones were glorfiying. And, although the girls referred to the dolls as a personalzed "her", rather than a depersonalized "it", the dolls were handled with much less care than the "baby" dolls.

As with most childhood fads, once the anxiety about being able to own lots of Barbies was diffused, the toy lost its allure.

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Which is not to say that parents don't have control over or a role when it comes to choosing their kids' toys or their friends. When we say "it takes a village", we often mean the support of a community that is needed when it comes to raising children. However, the "village" may not always have all of the same values as the parent. 

I have found it easier not to resist the child's insistence to an extreme. Rather, I try to use the opportunity to put forth my own point of view - my doubts and reservations and why I have them. Equally important, I am open to being persuaded otherwise and do listen to the kids' point of view as well. If nothing else, we are all stronger for having considered the other side.

I think that living in the US, especially as an immigrant, I have tended to focus much more than I otherwise might have, on the symbolism of the choices I was making at various points. This point came home to me when, on a visit to India many years ago, my son was given, what else, a toy gun as a gift. I remember being somewhat judgmental and wondering about the taste (naivete?) of the person giving the gift.

Looking back, I feel I was too harsh. The gun culture is quite alien to people who live in India. And so, they have the luxury (innocence?) of seeing it as a harmless "cops and robbers" costuming prop. Much the same way, that I was allowed to "smoke" little candy-flavored cigarettes as a kid growing up in Mumbai.

As for the gun given as a gift, my son was quite clueless about the concept, and he hardly played with it. In fact, we ended up not even bringing it back with us.

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Over the years I have given in (taken the path of, if not the least, certainly the lesser resistance) on a number of issues - ranging from allowing a 9 year old to watch the PG-13 rated movie Titanic, to allowing the kids to have high speed Internet access in their rooms, to allowing the night curfew to be later than I would have preferred.  (And of course, the skiing trip which was to come later.)

I am sure my kids would more readily be able to list the items on which I did not give in - I cannot think of a single one!