Training our kids for surveillance

(Say goodbye to your elf on the shelf)

Last weekend, my husband Michael and I traveled to the Adirondacks to meet up with friends. Our hotel was in full Christmas mode offering breakfast and photos with Santa, a room full of decorated Christmas Trees for auction, a real gingerbread house that was larger than our tool shed, and beautiful festive decor in the lobby—poinsettias, and lights, and garlands. I’m not really one of those who gets excited about this stuff but I appreciated the effort and the joy it brought to the space. And then I saw it. The most horrific Christmas decoration of all: The Elf on the Shelf.

I was the mother of a small person many moons ago when I learned about the Elf; the Foucaultian Nightmare Elf. I had cousins who “used” that Elf with their tots to keep them on the “Nice List”. I, on the other hand, immediately despised that elf. Was it the fact that I had been teaching my students Foucault for years? Or that I used Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon to explain the rigidity and fear-based model of US education? Or that the concept of someone watching you in childhood—in my case a cruel judgmental God—gave me anxiety and trauma that I’m still unpacking today? All of these things are part of my dislike for the Elf but my outrage at the popularity and ubiquity of the Elf is even simpler to explain. First, don’t train your children to be surveilled. And second, don’t train your children to “be good” for external rewards.

The Elf, with that survelling, phony smile, is ready to intimidate or scare young children all so they can earn gifts from “Santa” on Christmas (which will probably turn out to be too much stuff that is made of cheap petroleum products that they’ll tire of in record time so they can then sit in a landfill forever). Do I sound grumpy? You bet I do. I don’t like waste and I really don’t like using fear and judgment and espionage and materialist rewards to teach children how to be kind, good, generous, or loving.

So, for the love of all that is holy, just say NO to the Elf on the Shelf. And while you’re at it, say NO to targeted ads, and all the tracking apps we wittingly (I’m looking at you “public Venmo users” and “habitual Facebook posters”) and unwittingly (that’s a rabbit hole worth looking into) sign on to that give the overlords our personal data.

And, say YES to teaching your kids trust, love, acceptance, altruism, empathy, and goodness for goodness sake.