Yes. It’s True. I Hate Elf on the Shelf

I think it was, oh, last year I was introduced to the concept of this eerie little creature parents buy for their children themselves to keep their kids in line for a couple of months out of the year. He (or she- do they have shes? Update: Yes, yes. I have learned they have female elves) watches stalks children during the day, reports back to Santa at the North Pole each night, then treks back to his or her respective temporary home and engages in some sort of mischievous behavior while the wee ones are sleeping. WOW. These things must be exhausted! All this in order to intimidate kids into good behavior from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

If you are not in the know, the object of my abhorrence is none other than the Elf on the Shelf. I hate the very idea of these things. /Shiver Have you seen one? Shit. I’d be scared straight, too!

So let’s get this straight, people are spending $30 on a poorly manufactured doll whose job is to misbehave in their homes in order to get their kids to behave? Yeah. That makes sense.

To take it a step further, parents are intense about posing these things. They make messes on behalf of these creatures and then clean up the messes for an average of sixty days each year. Have you seen Pinterest? There are boards, blogs and even books dedicated to this blackmail of bambinos! Here here, now that’s what Christmas is all about! (Yes, that is sarcasm).

I have to ask – what happened to parenting? Now before people start going nuts and telling me I don’t “get it” because I am not a (biological) parent, I was a kid. And believe me, my parents didn’t use a creepy effigy a la Billy the Puppet to inspire us to behave.

My husband can give the girls one look and believe you me, that’s all it takes.

The solution is simple, right? “Heather, just don’t buy an Elf on the Shelf,” you say?

We leave to Arkansas a week from tomorrow. My eight year old (well next week) bonus daughter has an Elf on the Shelf in her life. Last year, my husband had her doll with him and handed it back to her mom in front of another little girl who upon setting eyes on this scene burst into tears and would not stop sobbing! Apparently, all of this elf’s magic was now compromised. So my husband and his ex-wife LIED to their daughter and told her that only adults can touch the elf and his magic was still safe. WHY would you do that to a child?!!

I have told the hubs I refuse to engage in the shenanigans. He probably doesn’t see the big deal and he probably rolled his eyes (when I wasn’t looking ha!) but K is extremely well-mannered and all around awesome already. She doesn’t need to be tricked into good behavior. It just feels wrong to think about looking her in the face and lying.Teaching a child that bribery will result in presents sends a message, yes. The WRONG message.

And it’s creepy. But we’ve covered that…

Be sure to follow up by reading this post right here: CLICK. So you can laugh at me. 😉