Parents! What to do about awful presents?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Our son has received a number of presents, which we personally would not have chosen for him. In some cases the sort of toys that are so cheap and nasty they break almost immediately and could even be dangerous. In other cases, toys that go completely against our values. No guns (yet) but things like warplanes.

We know that

  • we cannot protect him from the realities of the world forever (he is 3) but there are some things we would still prefer to avoid at this stage.

  • we know that these presents were kindly meant, although sometimes I wonder whether the war toys are given because they think he is being deprived!

  • in some cases - but not all - they came from people who could not afford good quality toys. I always think, if money is the issue, wouldn’t simple colouring books and crayons be a much better choice than some cheapo plastic dreck that falls apart in minutes?

  • the quality issue often resolves itself, one memorable occasion the item was already broken when we opened the packaging - into the bin it went!

How have other parents dealt with similar situations? I have always thanked the giver graciously, not wanting to appear ungrateful or snobbish, while despairing that they don’t seem to get it. Is there any way that we are at fault for not being more explicit about what we believe are suitable toys for our son? Do we have a right to make these distinctions?

Please, advice welcome!

2

One word: Regifting!

3

Snooooopy, I don’t quite get the meaning. Pass on the crap to someone elses kid? No way!

4

Repaint the wartoys from camo to fun colours like blue and orange and a pair of snips can take care of any protruding guns. Depending on your values, maybe even UN Peacekeeper blue would be appropriate.

5

A three year old does not understand the value of something so cost does not impress them. Some of my kids most favorite toys were what you call dreck or cheap. Go figure. My son had a Macdoanlds toy that was a red palstic robot dog. Everywhere we went kids would try to take it from him. I mean kids up to 6 years old. I wish I could find it and put it on the market because thats what the kids wanted to play with.

Judge a toy not by its value or quality but by how much fun the kids get from it.

6

I think your method is fine, especially for the shoddy gifts. Not everyone can afford the good stuff, as you mentioned, but still want to give something. Just accept whatever it is graciously and then dispose of it when the giver has left or your child has broken it. I know I have to go through my boys’ room at least a few times a year anyway, and toss out all the little cheapo trinkets and toys and happy meal gagets that accumulate because otherwise they take over. You’re just being proactive. :slight_smile:

When it comes to toys you have moral objections to, however, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying “I’m sorry, we don’t allow Timmy to play with toy guns.” It might be momentarily embarrassing, but it would help prevent the same thing from occurring over and over. Preferably, if you’re having a birthday party or something for the kid, specific toy guidelines would be disclosed to your guests before they show up package in hand.

7

Jackaroe I totally agree with that point. We do have some ‘cheap’ toys that turned out like that. My problem is with the ones that break so easily they could be harmful, or are rendered useless, when the same amount of money could have been spent on something better like a colouring book.

Anonymous Coward, some - ahem - ‘emasculation’ of certain items has already taken place! Not sure about promoting unwieldy and costly bureaucracies though :wink:

Thanks, and keep 'em coming!

8

I was raised in such a way that you gracefully thank whoever for whatever, even if the present in question is a box of rusty nails and broken glass. Just because someone else is crazy is no excuse for bad manners on one’s own part.

By the same token, however, I am a firm believer in the idea that Mom and Dad decide what Junior may and may not play with. If an item is cheap, but beloved, that’s one thing. If an item is potentially dangerous or violates one’s beliefs, that’s quite another.

One gratefully accepts what is offered as a gift, and graciously thanks the giver for thinking of you, and for expending his own cash to give a gift. One smiles, and schmoozes, and waits…

…and, if necessary, one heaves the toy into the dumpster as soon as the giver has left.

Style matters, and hardly anyone remembers to show a little class anymore, these days. Dunno why. It’s free.

9

Thanks too, Belladonna. My question would be how to tackle this without causing offence. So far I have done what Master Wang-Ka describes (not sure who he is saying has no class or style, us or the gift-givers :rolleyes: ) but I would really like to avoid these situations in the future, and wonder if there is a way of doing it without hurting or undermining.

10

My brother never had the more warlike toys – no guns allowed, though if he wanted to run around with a stick or something pretending it was a gun that was okay, he WAS a kid – and on the few occasions he was given them, he simply wasn’t interested. Hee hee hee…:slight_smile:

I think the diplomatic thing would be to toss them after the gifters are out of sight, but there’s got to be a way for you to broadcast among people likely to give your kid toys that there are some you normally don’t allow. A lot of people think, “Oh, it’s a boy, we’ll get a GI Joe.” (Or something like that. You know.) Most of the people who gave my brother presents must have known the house rule concerning such toys, though the occasional one didn’t.

11

Well you’re hardly inviting strangers to the kid birthday party. Talk to the parents ahead of times and just mention that you would prefer that your child not receive a howitzer.

And if you do get one, smile, exclaim what a lovely toy it is and put it away after everyone has left. Besides at 3 the kids wants the box most of the time.

12

You definitely can’t dictate to another what kind of gift someone else should give. If they ask, that’s one thing, but you don’t issue instructions.

However, you can get the word out subtly in normal conversation.

“Skippy just loves to draw and color - my fridge is covered with his artwork!”

“Skippy plays for hours and hours with his Lego - he is a builder at heart!”

“Every time we go to the mall, Skippy drags me into the bookstore. He’s got quite a personal library for one so young.”

There ya go - you make your point in a positive way. People are likely to remember things like this - I know I do. And if they don’t, you thank them politely for their kindness and discover that the inappropriate gift met with an unfortunate demise. Too bad so sad.

13

I have dealt with this until this Xmas. When I gave a note of the wish list for the kids. My wish list (things they needed) and the Kids wish list ( everything ever shown on TV.) My list was only five suggestions of things the kids really needed.)
The previous Xmas the MIL, who is very well meaning, just doesn’t grasp the concept of age appropriate toys or clothing. Lets say she bought 10 toys for our then 4 year old son. 7 of them were meant for ages 8 and up. The clothing was also for this size range.

While I do have the space to store this, or re-gift, what usually happens is that I forget about this item in storage ( or the back of a closet) and then when it is rediscovered, it is past its user time period and therefore a waste.

What I ended up doing that Xmas, was returning nearly everything to the store for future credit or the proper size or a toy they could play with.

A thank you note is mandatory for their generosity. I am a thank you note nazi. No thank you note, you can’t play with the toy. Period.

When a birthday rolls around for my kids, when the invitation goes out, I make a note of the things my kids are interested in ( and it is usually the $10 and under stuff.) as a suggestion for the parents. " Little Junior loves elephants, trains, puzzles and coloring/paint/toys of mucho noise capacity and Bose Speaker system." The parents love this clue and crack up at the parental wish list at the end.

There are also the times that grandparents will take the kids shopping and buy them shoes or a toy that you would have never picked out * ever. *

There is no way you can return these without breaking your child’s heart explaining that Yu-gi-oh is the anti-christ. And despite the fact that you have said in casual conversation that the kids already have two pair of tennis shoes ( or whatever item they inundate you with) that you are all shoe’d out, that there is no way you can get this through their heads. You will have 97 pairs of shoes from the inlaws before the school year is over because a) it is filling some kind of traumatic childhood experience of their own and b) it gives them pleasure.

If your inlaws ain’t happy…

All you can do is suck it up, let your child wear it /play with it and then gleefully give it to charity ( or better yet) an in law’s other grandkids who are younger than yours.

“Why does X have so many shoes and winter coats?”

“Your mother.”

“Oh.”

It is most theraputic.
Have fun.

14

I’ll definitely incorporate FairyChatMom’s tips. I don’t feel comfortable with ‘issuing instructions’ unless asked either, but I think I can manage to drop some unsubtle hints!

Wish lists wouldn’t work (unless specifically requested) because it would make people feel obliged to buy a gift when they might not be intending to. I also get the impression that some people we know like to buy things that are make large parcels, and would feel they were being less generous if they bought a small Lego box at the low end of the price range.

This advice is helping me loads. Thanks!

15

My inlaws once gave us a cartoon video about Santa Claus. To their credit, I don’t think they knew how bad it was.

This was an older version of a cartoon, and horrible. It was about Santa being tired on Christmas Eve, and deciding not to go out because he had too many chores to do.

All the children from the world decided to go to the North Pole to help Santa with his chores while he slept. The problem was, it was so racist and stereotypical I was horrified.

A Chinese boy cheerfully did Santa’s laundry.

A black boy (big lips and everything :eek: ) happily shined Santa’s boots.

And so on. I immediately pitched it.

There’s nothing that says you cannot graciously accept a gift, then unobtrusively discard it later. You’re not going to prevent getting crappy gifts, so don’t even try. Subtle hints, as FCM suggested, and a kindly thank you regardless, will go a long way.

16

I know this isn’t what you asked, but when I was a kid, my mother wouldn’t let me play with guns, and it was infuriating, humiliating, and ineffective. I just played with guns at other kids’ houses, where we all made fun of my mom’s belief that playing with guns would turn me into Rambo or something. But when I got a very cool automated water-gun one year and my mother made me return it to the store – well, it was a long time before my kid-heart could forgive her for that.

Consider, instead, using violent toys as a way to talk to a kid about the difference between fantasy and reality. The better they understand that difference, I think, the likelier they’ll be to oppose real-world violence.

Daniel

17

Dorkness I welcome that comment. I think we differ from your Mum in that we don’t actively forbid our son to play with guns. Just that we don’t want to encourage it either. If he pretends another object is a gun, or makes one out of Lego, or plays with water-pistols, I don’t mind. What I don’t like is the type of toys that glorify war and violence, especially at such a young age. Why should a 3 year old have a fighter plane armed with missiles?

However, we have made a point of not reacting with visible shock-horror at the offending toys, so that they do not become ‘forbidden fruit’.

It is worth pointing out that we live in a society where there is a strong mainstream rejection of ‘violent toys’, which is generally applauded in the media and endorsed in the local education system, but there are some exceptions, as we have found.

There is a fine line between not wanting to impose beliefs and values (religious, dietary as well as moral) and providing positive examples. But that, as you point out, is a different debate, and one that I would be happy to engage in.

18

Ah, okay. Sounds like you have a pretty reasonable policy, then. I remember being most offended by the water-gun restriction when I was a kid: if I could find a water-pistol shaped like a (for instance) dragon, that was okay, but the gun-shaped ones were verboten. And all the best ones in terms of nifty features were gun-shaped, meaning that I only got to play with lame-o water guns. Not that I’m bitter or anything :D. But when I was a kid, I didn’t so much care about what the toys mimicked as I cared about what they did, and I didn’t understand why my mother didn’t understand that distinction.

It’s also a fair point that a three-year-old will have more trouble understanding the difference between fantasy and reality than an older kid. As such, I think the advice other folks gave is pretty good.
Daniel

19

I have had this problem a lot. Now on ALL the invitations to all (4) of my children’s birthday parties I write “No presents please.”

Now, before you think me terrible for depriving my children of toys, let me tell you that they have PLENTY of toys. So many that storage is a big issue.

I have explained to them that birthday parties are about the joy of getting together with friends to celebrate. We play games, dance, eat teeth-rotting foods, and generally have a marvelous time. My kids never really miss the presents.

20

We had waterguns. I’ve never heard of THOSE being outlawed. And we once had these really cool Nerf swords. We would go after each other for hours with those. Such fun!

The funny part is, come to think of it, is that he’s now qualified to shoot an AK-47. :smiley: