"I Want, I Want"

I have to figure out what to do with my kiddos. They have everything they need, material-wise, and lots of what they want. Yet it's a constant bombardment with Scholastic fliers, going to stores and restaurants, vending machines... They are not nasty, but I will say that my oldest is especially fixated on things. Time to disclose to y'all that my oldest son has bipolar disorder -- which I'm sure I'll blog about a lot in the future. Anyway, he is up, he is down, and he obsesses a lot about a lot of things and is generally more difficult about things when he is not as stable in his mood.

He's the ringleader of the I Want I Want parade.  I typically will tell my children to list things they see and like on a wish list which we (and their grandparents) will use at birthday and Christmas time. In the past, this was sufficient.  Increasingly, though, it's been an endless parade of see-it, want-it, and generally not being grateful for what they do have.

How to stamp this out?  We've had a lot of talks about how fortunate we are, and how you have to be grateful for what you have.  I'm not sure what to do.  I know I need to have them volunteer and do some service projects.  I will.  But what to do now?  What to do w/ the ten-year-old who is soooo obsessed, for instance, with a movie he wants to rent that he asks us about it, harasses us, really, many many many times a day.  (And he just got his screen time back today over some poor choices he made earlier in the week!)