Do your kids screech when you drive past the Golden Arches and fail to swing in for chicken nuggety goodness? Mine do. And they’re only 2 ½. According to Juliet Schor, consumerism and economics expert and author of Born to Buy, “Kids can recognize logos by 18 months, and before their second birthday, they're asking for products by brand names.” Considering my kids watch a minimal amount of television, their recognition is more from our own habits (albeit bad ones) than marketers. However, this trend is no less frightening and appalling.

According to the American Psychology Association, the amount of advertising dollars allocated specifically to target young children tops $15 billion a year. In light of the industry’s irresponsibility in marketing to kids not yet capable of deciding whether to choose milk or juice, let alone settle on any financial decision, what can we, as parents and ultimate controllers of the purse strings, do to mitigate the effects?

Alarmingly, the most recent trend in advertising is targeting the preschool set and younger, with ads targeting kids as young as two years old. Notwithstanding the missing morality in that fact, studies show the more advertisers sell to younger and younger children, the faster the rate of childhood obesity climbs.

There is so much ground companies need to make up in order to make their product sell, which means all those “NEW!” and “IMPROVED!” and “FUNTASTIC!” labels on cereal boxes just cover the fact they contain the same amount of sugar as your kids’ favorite candy bar. Toys sporting the reputation for “MUST HAVE!” simply turn out, more times than not, to break, fail or end up recalled for lead poisoning.

The bottom line? We as parents need to educate ourselves and make informed purchasing decisions. The idea of blanket trust in marketing and advertising is just naive. To put in terms of our children, we don’t expect them to trust total strangers, so why should we?