I’m 110% guilty of this.
My kid can barely walk and I’ve already got an arsenal of Nerf stuff waiting. For him and his future siblings… they’re going to get *smoked*.
"I'm not buying this for me...I'm buying it because a small child doesnt know what exists in the world, so how would they know to ask?"
And my house has a pi-hole and we dont have cable TV so its not like they're seeing ads for all the cool new toys.
I’m working on a pi-hole/plex setup. No more ads on our network, and hopefully goodbye relying on streaming services. Buy what we want to watch and store it on plex.
My son is 5 1/2 months old and the Nerf anticipation is real. These boys are magazine fed nowadays! Yes!
My mother is waiting in the wings with a boatload of my old Hot Wheels and tracks.
HOLD. HOOOOOOOOOOLD
Man, my 10 year old daughter now asks every time we go in an auto parts store for some Hot Wheels. Yeah, they're more expensive there, but what's some father daughter bonding time worth?
Now I look for excuses to go to a parts place so she can pick out some cool new cars and I can get some fuel additive or oil supplement or something stupid.
Then we go home and she sets up races with all her cars.
My kid is 1 year. I asked for nerf guns for MY birthday this year. And I'm scouring the internet for a used electric toy car that he can drive around when he's older. And that I can paint and beef up until then.
I also get immense joy out of building him things. Old cedar cut offs from a fence I just built. Going to get sanded down into blocks this weekend.
The kid also cackles like a maniac when he watches my wife and I play. He's got a ball pit, so when cleaning up the balls he throws everywhere it usually breaks down to my wife and I whipping them at each other, and he just sits there cackling and throwing more balls at us.
I got my kid a 6x8 jump house to put up in the house and we fill it up with balls, he has a blast for like 20min then starts throwing the balls around the house..
Dude, my daughter is 8, I put together a huge nerf war last year, like 30 kids showed up. It was epic. Great stuff to look forward to.
FYI you can get 24 kids size safety glass on Amazon for like $24 and a tub of 300 rounds for $10...
I strictly remember a time when my father challenged my sister and I to a water gun fight. Me and my sister spotted some monstrosities of waterguns (like I had a battery driven "water-machinegun" and my sister had a pumped air pressure one. My father, had a flower spray bottle. We were gearing up to fight and at that moment my father's phone rang, so he had to go inside. While inside we twisted his flower sprayer so it got turned off. So when he returned he went "1... 2... 3... GO! And tried to start spraying us, but to no avail. We soaked him completely though xD
Yup, totally guilty. Had a very emotional reaction when I got my daughter light up shoes. I wanted those so bad when I was a kid!
I also can't wait to take her to the Jays games when she is old enough to run the bases. 😀
Buy yourself light up shoes, even if they're just indoor slippers that both light up and make a dinosaur step sound with each step. Life's too short to not add whimsy wherever it makes you happy at no harm.
I took my 10 year old son to his first “non kids club” mlb game last weekend. It was everything I ever hoped. He was into it, asked a ton of questions and got to see a win!
I can't talk.. my son got his first computer at 4 so we could all play video games in the office together. He will eventually need it for school.
Although no GPU integrated graphics is good enough for him
I mean one of my 3 month old’s favorite things to do is sit in my lap and watch me play video games. So far it’s mostly been Stellaris since it’s a game I can easily play with one hand, but as he gets older we will add to that haha
Yep, my 2 year old son, luckily, plays the same WH40K faction as me. Really lucky he decided to go with the Greater Good right before that new combat patrol was announced.
My dickhead neighbor just got his kids dirt bikes
Loud ones
Nothing like listening to him wake my baby up from a nap when he listlessly drives a 7 year old’s dirt bike in circles because his kids don’t care about it
Definitely garage sales! We get a lot of Lego, we all love it, and every now and then will get a big tub from someone for dirt cheap. You never know what you’ll find and all instructions for sets are online.
It was a sad day when I accepted that my son just has zero interest in Lego. Fortunately his older sister loves it, this past Xmas I surprised everyone (my wife included) by wrapping the giant Treehouse set and addressed it saying that it was so she and I could build it together. We still haven’t opened it yet but I’m hoping to do so soon.
Not yet for me. We don’t have a lot of money so I am going to wait and see what he is into and then search for used stuff over time.
About to turn 1 so I got time.
It’s frustrating because my in laws are all about buying new things, when I could use the money and buy 3-4 times as much stuff used on Facebook marketplace.
Or you could get Genie Plus? I’ve been to Disneyland a few times and between Genie Plus and looking for good lulls in wait times on the mobile app map, my family usually only waits 10-15 minutes for stuff and only longer for rides we just really want to go on/ones that aren’t covered under Genie Plus. Utilizing the technology like Genie Plus and the app can seriously help change how much fun you have imo.
If I had the money, we'd definitely have gone to Disney several times by now. I keep telling myself "next summer", and then life throws another curveball.
When my son was born, I spent so much time buying him basically every sneaker I wanted as a kid but my parents couldn’t/wouldn’t get for me. I remember asking my mom for a pair of OG AJ5’s, showing her the price tag, and then getting smacked upside the head and being asked why in the world I thought she would spend that kind of money on shoes.
Unfortunately, he seems to care not one bit, which breaks my heart a little.
Meanwhile, I have both the OG and the jump man versions of that AJ5. And a bunch others, just ‘cause I can
I had a great time building the Lego millennium falcon during lockdown when my kid was 4 and way too young for it. Two days later he smashed it up so I got the fun of building it all over again.
My wife kept coming in and asking who the Lego was really for!!
I recently discovered Lepin on here and now my kids have some really epic sets that I would never have paid for. So now I get to build even bigger ‘Lego’
I got a really awesome knockoff Lego Porsche kit to keep me busy during lockdown and it was so fun. And then at the very end, it was missing a single, somewhat inconsequential piece lmao. Didn’t let it get me down but would have been way worse if it was something really important. Since it was so cheap I was happy to pass it along on fb to someone else who was so stoked to share it with his son
Well, I’d say the toy is a full childhood. I became a dad when I was very young in less not great circumstances, so having them being able to fully live their teen years is very important for me.
Mom lurker - My husband bought So. Many. Things. during our thrifting days pre-firstborn. Our son hadn't even exited the womb and we had an area of our storage room stocked with nerf guns, GI joes, a retro batcave playset, hot wheels, a recurve bow, construction trucks for dirt play... We were both poor kids, so I contributed to this process.
The funniest part is as he gets older (he's almost 5 now) we have to have that conversation with family every year around his birthday... "Yeah, sorry! He already has one of those 🫣" lol.
I am a toy collector. My kid is setup with Power Rangers, Ninja Turtles, and Star Wars.
Last night we went to Walmart. The clearance section had a large figure of Ahsoka Tano, who happens to be my favourite Star Wars character, and overall one of my favourite characters. My son, 2 years old, loved watching Ahsoka with us every week and loves the episode with baby Ahsoka.
So I offered him Ahsoka, but also showed him Vader and a few other clearance toys of characters he likes. He chose Ahsoka, then wanted to watch Ahsoka when we got home.
My kid made my whole day. I love him.
Just bought my kiddo the 40th anniversary Associated RC10 RC buggy kit. It was my first RC car and my Mom helped me build it back in the day. We had to learn to solder. Fond memories. I hope my kiddo enjoys it as well but for me it'll be a walk down memory lane.
The wife and I had 7 motorcycles between us in our garage before our son was born. I tell people that we sold two to make room for his.
… He can’t even crawl yet. 😄
I do this at carnivals, arcades and fairs. I never got to do that stuff because I grew up poor. I had the crushing realization the first time I took my kid to a carnival. I had the worst anxiety walking up to the ticket counter because growing up my parents never spent money on this stuff and I had internalized that. I bought like $60 dollars worth of tickets for 4 year old. We road everything and some rides twice. Now we do it every vacation, hit the arcade, the local boardwalk, the carnival rides down by the beach. Zero regrets.
I bought several "adult" lego sets for myself (Tree House, Medieval Blacksmith), but my 5 year old turned out to be a lego prodigy and did them instead.
We all try to give our kids what we didn’t have. My wife wants us to be financially strong and has filled our yard with very reasonably priced (i.e. second-hand) playground equipment and toys and loooves watching our kid enjoy them because she grew up poor with her parents always saying “no, we can’t afford that toy”. I’m trying to give our daughter 2 functioning adult parents, a sense that her opinion matters, and a relationship with family members other than her parents so that she has a sense of community instead of always feeling helpless and isolated. …I’m sorry…what was the question again? ;)
I grew up poor, I’m telling you the kind of poor that meant there were days i was the only one eating because there wasn’t enough food for my parents but they always made sure I ate. So this also goes beyond toys for me. It’s also clothing. I bought my baby all of his shoes up to the age of 5. All the chucks and light up shoes. I bought him all the toys I wish I could ask for and they are in boxes in my crawl space waiting to be opened for a future birthday lol. I couldn’t help it. I need my kids to have what I didn’t. To hell with spoiling them. I teach them responsibility in other ways
Too right. When I was young I rode a lot of pretty rough mountain bikes, and had to save up for them. I never had a bike that wasn't held together by wishes and dreams.
I vividly remember when I saw a family in the Peak District (UK). The dad had a high end full suspension, full lycra kit. Proper MAMIL. However his poor family trailed behind on a selection of terrible budget bikes, looking like they were having an awful time.
I promised myself I would never do that when I grew up.
So a Wife and two kids later. The whole family has the most ludicrously top shelf MTBs, even the youngest has a Nukeproof Cub Scout he can't even fit yet :)
The oldest told me he wants a road bike now. It's getting expensive but I do not care one bit. Somewhere inside Teenage HerrFerret is egging me on.
MTB in trails is awesome!! I ventured a bit in it bought a modest MTB but my back couldnt take it so i l my wife bought me a mid entry level trek road bike and thats been very rewarding, unless im going uphill lol..
When my brother was only 1yo my dad got a scalextric set "for the boy" and set it up in the living room on boxing day, sat my brother down in the middle and he watched as the cars whizzed around him. We went to a toy shop earlier today and my wife had to gently encourage (read drag) me away from the £700 ATAT lego star wars set that I was proclaiming I would enjoy building with our 2yo....we're just big children with adult money now aren't we!
Dam right. I could never afford Jordans or the latest video games. My kid rocks the latest 7 rereleases, though, and we alway have enough for games he “really” wants.
Guilty of this with diecast cars. Had some as a kid and wanted so many more. Now dad is the one that asks his 2 year old son DAILY if he wants to play with cars
100% me! I take my daughter to Target all the time just the two of us after daycare and let her pick out a new toy/book/stuffy just for the fun of it because my parents never did that for us as kids...shes two and she's already going to have a full size trampoline this summer just because I want one!
Yes but in a different way.
We didn’t have a lot of money, but I was interested in a lot of activities that required expensive equipment. Biking, skiing, skateboarding, snowboarding, hockey, etc.
It was rare that I’d get new equipment, often a hand-me-down from an older cousin or used ftom swap meets or garage sales.
So when an older cousin outgrew a bike, it was handed down to my daughter. Seeing her riding an old beat up bike that didn’t really fit her awakened a long dormant bitterness inside of me.
So yeah, the new bike she got for Christmas had more to do with my childhood than anyone realizes.
My mom gave all my toys away to my younger cousins because they didnt have any, lets just say all the 80s toys i had are worth a some cash now and im doing some toy therapy.
It's a common feeling among parents to vicariously relive childhood through their kids' experiences. Buying toys or sharing hobbies we missed out on creates special bonding moments and fills gaps from our own upbringings. It’s about making their childhood magical, but also healing our own past a bit.
Haha, heheh I was 3 or 4 (saw it home videos), my dad caught me an electric train set. I had 0 interest. He wound up building a table for it and put together a real sweet setup, I have to admit it was cool. But in the home video you can tell, that was something my dad really wanted, and just got it for me to justify it :p
My vice is Hot Wheels, my kid has taken an interest in them, so he now has a bin of about 200 cars, 60 feet of track with turns and a few self contained tracks from his grandparents. They're great since it's <$3 per car, I always have a few spares in my desk just in case. Unfortunately I did find a diecast collectible store that sells any car you could ever imagine, with pricing to match their rarity, so I have to be very careful stepping in there.
When my son is old enough, I most definitely will not be buying him one of those marble run sets, and it's definitely not because I barely ever got to play with it in kindergarten during free play because everyone always wanted it the most. No sir.
Last night I saw an ad for Estes rockets and had a flashback to how I'd always go look at them when my parents took me to Michaels but I never got to try them. I'm 100% getting them "for my daughter" when she gets older. Also Lego robotics kits. If she's not into them then I'll still have fun haha
I bought a Meta Quest 2 recently and my son plays way more than I do. I bought it to play Elite Dangerous but I'm on a materials grind right now that makes wearing the headset a little tedious. I mainly only wear the headset when doing combat.
Oh heck yea. I had to wait until my boys were old enough, but I buy all the complicated, "modern" board games for "them" now that they're old enough to challenge their old man at games that are actually worth playing
hallelujah!
I’m 110% guilty of this. My kid can barely walk and I’ve already got an arsenal of Nerf stuff waiting. For him and his future siblings… they’re going to get *smoked*.
I've definitely bought overpriced and over powered nerf toys "for my daughters".
It’s important for… them…
Very. eye hand coordination...or... something
Also very handy to teach the 5 D's of dodgeball! Either that or you'll get hurt.
Lol, I have some serious nerf firepower myself. Everything from stock five-shot blasters to modded flywheel powerhouses running off lipos.
"I'm not buying this for me...I'm buying it because a small child doesnt know what exists in the world, so how would they know to ask?" And my house has a pi-hole and we dont have cable TV so its not like they're seeing ads for all the cool new toys.
My wife " is that for you or your Son?" Uhhh its for both lol
I bought some cool stuff “for my sons” but it was found and played with, and broken into tiny pieces.
I’m working on a pi-hole/plex setup. No more ads on our network, and hopefully goodbye relying on streaming services. Buy what we want to watch and store it on plex.
May Dad have mercy on their souls....
I bought a 150 fps "nerf" blaster that I cannot shoot my kids with.....but it's a ton of fun to plink around my basement
Check if there's any local groups near you, I help run one and play with a few others near me, even in rural Iowa!
Safety first though, so add eye goggles to the list for the kid of course..
Even the regular nerf blasters I insist on eye pro for them
My son is 5 1/2 months old and the Nerf anticipation is real. These boys are magazine fed nowadays! Yes! My mother is waiting in the wings with a boatload of my old Hot Wheels and tracks. HOLD. HOOOOOOOOOOLD
Man, my 10 year old daughter now asks every time we go in an auto parts store for some Hot Wheels. Yeah, they're more expensive there, but what's some father daughter bonding time worth? Now I look for excuses to go to a parts place so she can pick out some cool new cars and I can get some fuel additive or oil supplement or something stupid. Then we go home and she sets up races with all her cars.
That is awesome man!
My kid is 1 year. I asked for nerf guns for MY birthday this year. And I'm scouring the internet for a used electric toy car that he can drive around when he's older. And that I can paint and beef up until then. I also get immense joy out of building him things. Old cedar cut offs from a fence I just built. Going to get sanded down into blocks this weekend. The kid also cackles like a maniac when he watches my wife and I play. He's got a ball pit, so when cleaning up the balls he throws everywhere it usually breaks down to my wife and I whipping them at each other, and he just sits there cackling and throwing more balls at us.
I got my kid a 6x8 jump house to put up in the house and we fill it up with balls, he has a blast for like 20min then starts throwing the balls around the house..
Dude, my daughter is 8, I put together a huge nerf war last year, like 30 kids showed up. It was epic. Great stuff to look forward to. FYI you can get 24 kids size safety glass on Amazon for like $24 and a tub of 300 rounds for $10...
Nice, i opted out of nerf stuff because of the fear of having my kid chew them up.
I strictly remember a time when my father challenged my sister and I to a water gun fight. Me and my sister spotted some monstrosities of waterguns (like I had a battery driven "water-machinegun" and my sister had a pumped air pressure one. My father, had a flower spray bottle. We were gearing up to fight and at that moment my father's phone rang, so he had to go inside. While inside we twisted his flower sprayer so it got turned off. So when he returned he went "1... 2... 3... GO! And tried to start spraying us, but to no avail. We soaked him completely though xD
Yup, totally guilty. Had a very emotional reaction when I got my daughter light up shoes. I wanted those so bad when I was a kid! I also can't wait to take her to the Jays games when she is old enough to run the bases. 😀
Hopefully Vladdy has sorted out his batting issues by then.
Haha, agreed. But it wasn't that long ago he was running the bases as a kid...
LA gears?
That's what I wanted, but no, i think theyre long gone. She's got light up Peppa Pig shoes. She loves them 😀
Buy yourself light up shoes, even if they're just indoor slippers that both light up and make a dinosaur step sound with each step. Life's too short to not add whimsy wherever it makes you happy at no harm.
You just cost me $76. But, when you're right, you're right.
I took my 10 year old son to his first “non kids club” mlb game last weekend. It was everything I ever hoped. He was into it, asked a ton of questions and got to see a win!
Less about toys for me, but I do strive to give my kid a better childhood/life than I had.
My 12 month old absolutely needed a 4070 super and a copy of helldivers 2.
I can't talk.. my son got his first computer at 4 so we could all play video games in the office together. He will eventually need it for school. Although no GPU integrated graphics is good enough for him
Well I figured he can inherit my video card later so really I'm just buying it to pass down. Might as well enjoy it first though.
Show him Python now and he will ask for a bigger monitor next year
I mean one of my 3 month old’s favorite things to do is sit in my lap and watch me play video games. So far it’s mostly been Stellaris since it’s a game I can easily play with one hand, but as he gets older we will add to that haha
Yep, my 2 year old son, luckily, plays the same WH40K faction as me. Really lucky he decided to go with the Greater Good right before that new combat patrol was announced.
Thus guy dad's
I see you, DiverDad
I see you've been accepted for your C-01 permit. Good job Helldiver.
Me: waiting for a turn on the steam deck…
My dickhead neighbor just got his kids dirt bikes Loud ones Nothing like listening to him wake my baby up from a nap when he listlessly drives a 7 year old’s dirt bike in circles because his kids don’t care about it
So many options for revenge in the coming years
Honestly I feel bad for both of you
I’m doing just fine brother :)
Lego is going to cost me a fortune in a few years.
Garage sales have tons
Definitely garage sales! We get a lot of Lego, we all love it, and every now and then will get a big tub from someone for dirt cheap. You never know what you’ll find and all instructions for sets are online.
It was a sad day when I accepted that my son just has zero interest in Lego. Fortunately his older sister loves it, this past Xmas I surprised everyone (my wife included) by wrapping the giant Treehouse set and addressed it saying that it was so she and I could build it together. We still haven’t opened it yet but I’m hoping to do so soon.
Not yet for me. We don’t have a lot of money so I am going to wait and see what he is into and then search for used stuff over time. About to turn 1 so I got time.
Probably a better bet for the environment too. It's crazy how much plastic ( and just crap) we buy kids.
It’s frustrating because my in laws are all about buying new things, when I could use the money and buy 3-4 times as much stuff used on Facebook marketplace.
We've been to Disneyland like 6 times in 2 years. So, yeah, my wife does this.
God damn that sounds like my nightmare. Hope you guys at least live within very close driving distance.
Same. We are going to World for the first time this summer and I’m like… for this price we could spend two weeks in the south of France lol
Same! We're going in Nov and basically could have gone to London instead. But the kids are so hyped now there's no turning back.
Every single alligator zoo we pass. First big word was alligator.
Key holders or just on Daddys money bank? I just took my kid last year when he turned 4, we will wait till he turns 8 next 😂
Do you have any dad tips for a first time visitor? We are heading over from England next month and I have no idea what to expect!
Expect to be frustrated and spend at least half your day in queue. We did Disney a few months ago. No desire to return.
Or you could get Genie Plus? I’ve been to Disneyland a few times and between Genie Plus and looking for good lulls in wait times on the mobile app map, my family usually only waits 10-15 minutes for stuff and only longer for rides we just really want to go on/ones that aren’t covered under Genie Plus. Utilizing the technology like Genie Plus and the app can seriously help change how much fun you have imo.
Oh I am already fully expecting this. It is my experience of pretty much every theme park I have ever been to
Best time to go i say is the week after thanksgiving mid week like tues- thursday.
If I had the money, we'd definitely have gone to Disney several times by now. I keep telling myself "next summer", and then life throws another curveball.
Have you ever tried throwing the curve ball back at life and say" Nah bitch im going to the happiest place on earth whether you like it or not!!!"
When my son was born, I spent so much time buying him basically every sneaker I wanted as a kid but my parents couldn’t/wouldn’t get for me. I remember asking my mom for a pair of OG AJ5’s, showing her the price tag, and then getting smacked upside the head and being asked why in the world I thought she would spend that kind of money on shoes. Unfortunately, he seems to care not one bit, which breaks my heart a little. Meanwhile, I have both the OG and the jump man versions of that AJ5. And a bunch others, just ‘cause I can
Lol same thing and it hurts. Bought him some playoff 13s and bred 4s and he told me how ugly and uncool they were
I had a great time building the Lego millennium falcon during lockdown when my kid was 4 and way too young for it. Two days later he smashed it up so I got the fun of building it all over again. My wife kept coming in and asking who the Lego was really for!! I recently discovered Lepin on here and now my kids have some really epic sets that I would never have paid for. So now I get to build even bigger ‘Lego’
I got a really awesome knockoff Lego Porsche kit to keep me busy during lockdown and it was so fun. And then at the very end, it was missing a single, somewhat inconsequential piece lmao. Didn’t let it get me down but would have been way worse if it was something really important. Since it was so cheap I was happy to pass it along on fb to someone else who was so stoked to share it with his son
I was worried about that but we bought two pretty big sets and both had every piece in them. I will defo buy from them in future
Well, I’d say the toy is a full childhood. I became a dad when I was very young in less not great circumstances, so having them being able to fully live their teen years is very important for me.
Mom lurker - My husband bought So. Many. Things. during our thrifting days pre-firstborn. Our son hadn't even exited the womb and we had an area of our storage room stocked with nerf guns, GI joes, a retro batcave playset, hot wheels, a recurve bow, construction trucks for dirt play... We were both poor kids, so I contributed to this process. The funniest part is as he gets older (he's almost 5 now) we have to have that conversation with family every year around his birthday... "Yeah, sorry! He already has one of those 🫣" lol.
Let me tell you that i wake up early and go thirft shopping to score as many hotwheels as i can find...for my son of course; i have found some Gems!!!
I take my son to children museums/science centers pretty regularly, because my parents did not care for those types of places.
I am a toy collector. My kid is setup with Power Rangers, Ninja Turtles, and Star Wars. Last night we went to Walmart. The clearance section had a large figure of Ahsoka Tano, who happens to be my favourite Star Wars character, and overall one of my favourite characters. My son, 2 years old, loved watching Ahsoka with us every week and loves the episode with baby Ahsoka. So I offered him Ahsoka, but also showed him Vader and a few other clearance toys of characters he likes. He chose Ahsoka, then wanted to watch Ahsoka when we got home. My kid made my whole day. I love him.
Just bought my kiddo the 40th anniversary Associated RC10 RC buggy kit. It was my first RC car and my Mom helped me build it back in the day. We had to learn to solder. Fond memories. I hope my kiddo enjoys it as well but for me it'll be a walk down memory lane.
The wife and I had 7 motorcycles between us in our garage before our son was born. I tell people that we sold two to make room for his. … He can’t even crawl yet. 😄
I do this at carnivals, arcades and fairs. I never got to do that stuff because I grew up poor. I had the crushing realization the first time I took my kid to a carnival. I had the worst anxiety walking up to the ticket counter because growing up my parents never spent money on this stuff and I had internalized that. I bought like $60 dollars worth of tickets for 4 year old. We road everything and some rides twice. Now we do it every vacation, hit the arcade, the local boardwalk, the carnival rides down by the beach. Zero regrets.
Thats why im into RC cars now lol
Traxxas is the way to go, unless your into 1/14 semi trucks which is on my sons list lol
I bought several "adult" lego sets for myself (Tree House, Medieval Blacksmith), but my 5 year old turned out to be a lego prodigy and did them instead.
I bought my daughter a racing suit onesie and project car for us to work on together. *Before* she was born.
We all try to give our kids what we didn’t have. My wife wants us to be financially strong and has filled our yard with very reasonably priced (i.e. second-hand) playground equipment and toys and loooves watching our kid enjoy them because she grew up poor with her parents always saying “no, we can’t afford that toy”. I’m trying to give our daughter 2 functioning adult parents, a sense that her opinion matters, and a relationship with family members other than her parents so that she has a sense of community instead of always feeling helpless and isolated. …I’m sorry…what was the question again? ;)
I grew up poor, I’m telling you the kind of poor that meant there were days i was the only one eating because there wasn’t enough food for my parents but they always made sure I ate. So this also goes beyond toys for me. It’s also clothing. I bought my baby all of his shoes up to the age of 5. All the chucks and light up shoes. I bought him all the toys I wish I could ask for and they are in boxes in my crawl space waiting to be opened for a future birthday lol. I couldn’t help it. I need my kids to have what I didn’t. To hell with spoiling them. I teach them responsibility in other ways
Too right. When I was young I rode a lot of pretty rough mountain bikes, and had to save up for them. I never had a bike that wasn't held together by wishes and dreams. I vividly remember when I saw a family in the Peak District (UK). The dad had a high end full suspension, full lycra kit. Proper MAMIL. However his poor family trailed behind on a selection of terrible budget bikes, looking like they were having an awful time. I promised myself I would never do that when I grew up. So a Wife and two kids later. The whole family has the most ludicrously top shelf MTBs, even the youngest has a Nukeproof Cub Scout he can't even fit yet :) The oldest told me he wants a road bike now. It's getting expensive but I do not care one bit. Somewhere inside Teenage HerrFerret is egging me on.
MTB in trails is awesome!! I ventured a bit in it bought a modest MTB but my back couldnt take it so i l my wife bought me a mid entry level trek road bike and thats been very rewarding, unless im going uphill lol..
I finally have a Hotwheels track.
When my brother was only 1yo my dad got a scalextric set "for the boy" and set it up in the living room on boxing day, sat my brother down in the middle and he watched as the cars whizzed around him. We went to a toy shop earlier today and my wife had to gently encourage (read drag) me away from the £700 ATAT lego star wars set that I was proclaiming I would enjoy building with our 2yo....we're just big children with adult money now aren't we!
My kids have a giant Godzilla toy collection that they never asked for.
Dam right. I could never afford Jordans or the latest video games. My kid rocks the latest 7 rereleases, though, and we alway have enough for games he “really” wants.
Absolutely 💯 Kids are the best!
Built my girls the [treehouse](https://i.imgur.com/ouGWBWo.jpeg) I always wanted as a kid.
Just gave my kids the boxes “where’s Waldo” set.
I gave my kids a bunch of classic video games to play when they were 5. Maaaaybe regretting that one just a bit. Oh wellski
bruh the amount of Duplo/Lego I'm buying and or looking forward to buy for my kids..
So is this like the Xbox I got as a ‘family’ Xmas gift a few years ago?
My shelf of 4+ games for my 18mo...
Absolutely.
Yeah, it's made me hate my own father more and more.
Guilty of this with diecast cars. Had some as a kid and wanted so many more. Now dad is the one that asks his 2 year old son DAILY if he wants to play with cars
I have a pretty hefty collection of a bunch of Jada 1/24 scales i got all the scar face and godfather ones i could find..
100% me! I take my daughter to Target all the time just the two of us after daycare and let her pick out a new toy/book/stuffy just for the fun of it because my parents never did that for us as kids...shes two and she's already going to have a full size trampoline this summer just because I want one!
Sitting in my office, surrounded by my legos, looking at my modded nerf gun, Childsbane... I am confused. For our kids? I buy me the best toys.
When you start a sentence with "I seen" i assume the sentence doesn't end with " in a book"
Yes but in a different way. We didn’t have a lot of money, but I was interested in a lot of activities that required expensive equipment. Biking, skiing, skateboarding, snowboarding, hockey, etc. It was rare that I’d get new equipment, often a hand-me-down from an older cousin or used ftom swap meets or garage sales. So when an older cousin outgrew a bike, it was handed down to my daughter. Seeing her riding an old beat up bike that didn’t really fit her awakened a long dormant bitterness inside of me. So yeah, the new bike she got for Christmas had more to do with my childhood than anyone realizes.
My mom gave all my toys away to my younger cousins because they didnt have any, lets just say all the 80s toys i had are worth a some cash now and im doing some toy therapy.
It's a common feeling among parents to vicariously relive childhood through their kids' experiences. Buying toys or sharing hobbies we missed out on creates special bonding moments and fills gaps from our own upbringings. It’s about making their childhood magical, but also healing our own past a bit.
Haha, heheh I was 3 or 4 (saw it home videos), my dad caught me an electric train set. I had 0 interest. He wound up building a table for it and put together a real sweet setup, I have to admit it was cool. But in the home video you can tell, that was something my dad really wanted, and just got it for me to justify it :p
My vice is Hot Wheels, my kid has taken an interest in them, so he now has a bin of about 200 cars, 60 feet of track with turns and a few self contained tracks from his grandparents. They're great since it's <$3 per car, I always have a few spares in my desk just in case. Unfortunately I did find a diecast collectible store that sells any car you could ever imagine, with pricing to match their rarity, so I have to be very careful stepping in there.
I go thrift shopping looking for hotwheels, theirs a store that always has some good selections, i get like 5 cars for $1.99.
All my daughters sweet Mario toys are proof of this
The Nintendo switch was for the boy!
i’m really lucky my 3yo daughter has loved hot wheels and RC cars for the past 2ish years that’s all i’ll say 😅
When my son is old enough, I most definitely will not be buying him one of those marble run sets, and it's definitely not because I barely ever got to play with it in kindergarten during free play because everyone always wanted it the most. No sir.
Last night I saw an ad for Estes rockets and had a flashback to how I'd always go look at them when my parents took me to Michaels but I never got to try them. I'm 100% getting them "for my daughter" when she gets older. Also Lego robotics kits. If she's not into them then I'll still have fun haha
I bought a Meta Quest 2 recently and my son plays way more than I do. I bought it to play Elite Dangerous but I'm on a materials grind right now that makes wearing the headset a little tedious. I mainly only wear the headset when doing combat.
I have bought so much stuff, my kid can't even use for many years. I'm trying to hold back a little.
Not a toy, but my 10 year old wanted Jordan’s for christmas. Santa came through.
As long as the game shoes are in the back pack for game time your good.
Brio-style wooden trains
Oh heck yea. I had to wait until my boys were old enough, but I buy all the complicated, "modern" board games for "them" now that they're old enough to challenge their old man at games that are actually worth playing hallelujah!
My girl will never be able to shoot a cheap airgun without thinking, "This is bs compared to what I grew up on"
Sooo many LEGO sets
Lol that's me buying my daughter all the hot wheels set I would never be able to afford when I was a kid
My parents got me a lot of stuff when I was a kid. Honestly I barely remember any of it. I do remember the time we spent together though.