[NeedMoreTea]

As I discovered watching our kids go through school, if you had cable and the "in backpack", kids at school would almost certainly have found something else to dig at.

Those that react get picked on. If they can't single out lack of clothes, or knowing current music, they dig at too fat, too thin, wears glasses, wrong hair colour, wrong accent, you name it. In short if you react you lose.

I am much less open to the having all the same things to fit in argument than I was when I started on the parenting journey.

[colechristensen]

Parent wasn't concerned about being picked on but not being able to participate in the culture of the other children without cable TV.

There's a big personal preference there about whether or not you want your kids (or you yourself regret being or not being) involved heavily in the mainstream pop culture of your peers as children.

Experiencing more than just whatever is popular is important, but being very isolated can have effects as well. Whatever choices you make will have a strong impact, and there are very often not clear rights and wrongs.

[NeedMoreTea]

Picked on or not able to participate is part of the same grouping that goes on in schools. For the most part is little to do with how much they are enabled or not to fit in.

Before being a parent I'd have inclined to agree with GP. The experience of seeing my kids progress, and their differing experience, through school leaves me believing it's nearly all down to personality. That of course is far harder for parents to influence. Course a kid with a sensitive disposition might well blame the lack of the right things as the reason to feel an outsider.

The one certainty is parenting ain't easy. :)