How I hate these ADs[em]angry[/em]
@sudiptacallingu (10879)
India
March 31, 2008 1:53am CST
My son who is 8+ is an avid TV watcher like most of his age. Apart from the cartoon channels, I encourage him to watch various other programmes as per his age. Now, most of these channels (incl. the cartoon ones) I notice are airing advts. on sanitary napkins. I ignore them, but off late my son is asking me questions about them. I try to say that I don’t know, but typically like inquisitive kids he keeps on telling me that these are meant for girls and women so why don’t I know! (one ad even has the tagline : enjoy being a woman
). Yesterday I had gone with him to the departmental store to do my monthly grocery and as luck would have it, we came upon a section on personal hygiene and there, occupying pride of place, were rows upon rows of different sanitary napkins. As if he had hit a jackpot, he was all excited and jumping and generally attracting enough attention for me to go red 
and then pestering me to buy one ‘just to see what it is mummy, why don’t you try anything new???” and then ‘you are a miser, I wont come shopping with you, OK why don’t you ask the counter-man what is it for’ etc etc.
Have you ever faced anything like this? How do you deal with such situations and avoid such queries, the answer to which is literally staring at your face?
). Yesterday I had gone with him to the departmental store to do my monthly grocery and as luck would have it, we came upon a section on personal hygiene and there, occupying pride of place, were rows upon rows of different sanitary napkins. As if he had hit a jackpot, he was all excited and jumping and generally attracting enough attention for me to go red and then pestering me to buy one ‘just to see what it is mummy, why don’t you try anything new???” and then ‘you are a miser, I wont come shopping with you, OK why don’t you ask the counter-man what is it for’ etc etc.
Have you ever faced anything like this? How do you deal with such situations and avoid such queries, the answer to which is literally staring at your face?1 person likes this
2 responses
@SViswan (12051)
• India
29 Apr 08
Well, I'm very frank about questions like this with my son. I might not go into too many details but do give age appropriate replies. As of now my 7 year old knows it's for women and they use it sometimes....since he had his brother, he assumes it's something like a diaper...lol.
I believe it's better to tell them when they ask...and just respond to the point (in an age appropriate way)...the more you avoid the question, the more they'll want to know.
@SViswan (12051)
• India
29 Apr 08
If you talk to kids openly at home, you can avoid the embarassing scene at the supermarket..lol
I can very well imagine your situation with your son asking you to get it at the supermarket.
hmmm...if it was me....I would just stop doing what I was doing...and look at my son and tell him we will talk about it at home (it's easy for me to do because I do it all the time and talk to him later....but I can see there's no point in you doing that because you aren't going to bring up the topic till the school does!).
@anonymili (3138)
•
31 Mar 08
LOL your discussion really had me chuckling out loud, I'm so sorry, it's not funny for you but I was just picturing you very red-faced with your little one jumping up and down shouting "buy the sanitary napkins mummy go on go on!" hehe How embarrassing for you and what a lovely story for you to be able to share with his future bride when he grows up, you can have your revenge then hun, a long time to wait I know but still...
I've never been in this situation personally as I don't have kids but I remember years ago at a family friend's house I had awful cramps and there were dozens of people in the house and I just wanted to lie down for a while so I went upstairs and lay down. The family friend's son was about 12 or 13 and kept asking me what was wrong and why was I lying down so to get rid of him I said it was women's things and bless him, he went and got me a blanket and said "shall I get you a hot water bottle too?" It was so sweet but kind of embarrassing...!
