By Shannon Brescher Shea of We’ll Eat You Up, We Love You So

I hate the Elf on the Shelf. Not only is it not quite tacky enough to be cute, it also stands for a number of values that are the opposite of what I want to teach my sons.

For those who have had the good fortune of avoiding the Elf on the Shelf, it’s an over-priced stuffed elf that comes with a story. The Elf is a spy for Santa who watches the kids all day and reports back every night. Each morning, the parent puts the Elf in a different place, some of which involve increasingly complicated scenarios.

We’ve had the good fortune that my three-year-old hasn’t heard about the Elf from his friends. But if he ever asks for it, here’s why I’m going to say “no”:

It reinforces the idea that “good” girls and boys get toys while “bad” ones don’t.

Although the Elf seems like a harmless way to get kids to behave, the message that behavior is tied to material goods is toxic.

Eventually, kids will internalize the message that if they’re “good,” they’ll get rewarded with material things. If parents continue to reinforce this idea, they can easily end up with entitled brats who will be very disappointed in the real world.

This message also implies that kids who don’t have as many gifts (or didn’t receive any at all) are “bad.” It’s the kid version of the Just World Fallacy, which says if someone is poor or has bad things happen to them, they did something to deserve it. Poor kids face enough embarrassment when everyone is talking about what they received at Christmas. Often, they (and their parents) are already labeled as “bad” because they are poor whether they did anything to earn the label or not. We don’t need to add to their burden by equating – even unintentionally – not receiving a wealth of gifts with naughty behavior.

It turns December into one long waiting period for presents.

While December as a long waiting period for presents is rather inevitable, the very presence of the Elf as Santa’s substitute reinforces it every morning. Personally, I want to celebrate Advent with my kids, where the pre-Christmas season is about serving others as you wait on a holy and magical event. (Jesus being born, not Santa.) Even if you aren’t religious, December can still be about helping others and spending family time together. Activities like collecting food for a local food bank set a better example than the Elf.

It makes your home into a surveillance state.

Honestly, the Elf on the Shelf is creepy. Besides its Uncanny Valley look, it’s also supposed to be a little spy in your house. Our lives are under enough surveillance, between the NSA (in America), closed-camera TVs, and Internet giants compiling data about us. We don’t need little pretend dolls to follow our children’s every move, even if it’s just imaginary. And I’m not the only one who thinks this – a Canadian digital technology professor published a paper entitled Who’s the Boss? saying it teaches “young people to blindly accept panoptic surveillance.” From a parenting point of view, it’s another way society demonstrates that it doesn’t trust children. It says (in a lighthearted way, of course) that children need to be watched at all times to ensure obedience and punished if they screw up.

Before you respond, “Why are you making such a big deal about this? It’s just a toy,” I ask you to take a good, hard look into your Elf on the Shelf’s beady little eyes and tell me that you entirely trust him. Yeah, I didn’t think so. Elves are traditionally dangerous mischief-makers that people didn’t want in their homes.

Perhaps we should return to that perspective.

This post was originally published on We’ll Eat You Up We Love You So. 

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About the Author

Shannon Brescher Shea is a mom of two young boys who lives in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. She writes about how her family is learning to be kinder, more sustainable and more adventurous at her blog, We’ll Eat You Up, We Love You So, as well as on Facebook and Twitter.