It turns out that physical things don’t buy as much happiness as experiences. It’s experiencing things together that binds us. This makes sense to me. My kids want an Xbox. We’ll let them earn money to buy it themselves, but we’re not buying it ourselves. We don’t have room in our living room for any more crap, and anyway there’s too much useless screen time in our house as it is.
Besides, it may pacify them in the moment they’re actually using it, but if psychology is right, and I think it is, a few years from now they’ll get much more emotional satisfaction out of remembering the cool things we did together.
Like staying at a cool historic hotel (this one, review to come later on Pit Stops For Kids), high on character…
…with a bowling alley in the basement!
Or like walking 1.5 miles each way to visit a 2300-foot-long rail-to-trail bridge.
Or getting this close to a wind turbine…
…on the way to the wedding of Mom and Dad’s friends:
…who managed to do the impossible and have AMAZING food (Ecuadorian!) for a whole lot of people at quite possibly the coolest reception venue ever:
Oh yes, and don’t forget the thoroughbred horse racing we squeezed in between Mass and wedding on Sunday.
It was a pretty intense weekend. We filled just about every moment, because whenever we tried to settle down at the hotel, the littler boys turned on the “stir crazy” gene.
We have two more travel writing trips this summer. In the preparation stages I almost always go through an introvert’s panic attack feeling of being overwhelmed by the desire to stay home and keep things simple hesitation. But I always take a deep breath and push through, knowing that the experience is worth the effort.
Kathleen M. Basi 
You may believe in experiences but our shared childhood of ‘experiences’ is still full of things we did not get to see or do that set us apart from pop culture references. Case in point: Mash. Don’t be so quick to pooh pooh gaming experiences.
MASH went off the air in 1983, when I was far too young to be watching it anyway. And we did watch the A team, Knight Rider, Cosby, and MacGyver, all of which are also cultural icons. Nobody can watch every single TV show that becomes a “thing.” And even in adulthood I’m bewildered by the number of TV series that are considered “must see.” How do people make time for it all?
I’m not sure you guys are disagreeing if the question is games. Games – especially RPG like Tamara does – seem to me to be an experience, not a material good.
Also, watching TV shows is not a material good either.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/buy-experiences/381132/
True. Alex and I have been playing the Dice Masters game this week, and really enjoying it. And we have really worked at expanding the board game collection because it’s a good way to spend time together as a family.
On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 3:04 PM, Kathleen M. Basi wrote:
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I agree…they won’t remember the things as much as they will remember the time spent together. Nurturing our children through life experiences is our slogan for our blog.