You Don’t Need a Flock of Fairies

Call me old fashioned, but I recently read an article that I found eye popping at the least, and horrifying at the worst.

It was entitled, “Why New York parents are spending up to $50k for strangers to entertain their kids.”

I realize we must be referring in the article to the 1% of the 1%, but even then, it seems a bit, shall we say, over the top one upsmanship?

At $175 per hour, a child can have a white-gloved “playdate valet”, along with a chauffeur to accompany the tot to playdates!

I hesitate to give this kind of thing more press, but here goes:

You can give your little one an “educational safari” at the Bronx Zoo or Central Park Zoo for anywhere from a tony $1,500 to $7000.

If you have a budding runway fashionista, you can have a staged Fashion Week experience where your little one can trot down the aisle for a mere $4,000!

And here is the one that truly set me afire: For $350 an hour, you can hire a flock of fairy tale fairies, dressed in gossamer wings and all, to read “curated bedtime stories” to your wee one before they drop off to dreamy dream land. Holding bubble wands, wearing wings and dispensing tiaras, the children are in bedtime story heaven; at a price and for a night. Where do you go from here. Can you project, oh about 20 years into the future, to the weddings of these wee ones? I can only imagine the size of these tiaras!

Here’s a way to save a ton of $.

You be the fairy. If you need a flock of them, ask another parent to join in and share the story telling time; and add voices to the telling. Kids love to hear them. It could be part of a special sleepover event, if you choose to do sleepovers at your home.

The only investment needed for this amazing journey into the “Neverland” of the imagination for you and your child is…the gift of your time.

Gossamer wings and fairy dust are optional. But, even these added things may prove a nice touch for a special evening of bedtime stories for your young reader. Now where the heck did I put my bubble wand?