Yeah, just reading the OP this is what I thought too.
Does your wife spend a lot of times on choosing gifts? And take pride in choosing the right thing and giving people great gifts? If giving gifts is how she shows love, then I can see how she’d be hurt if she feels that other people aren’t showing the same love she is. People value different things, and she might miss that you and your parents are showing love by doing X and Y instead of by giving presents and are only giving presents out of social obligation.
If it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back with either stress of all the Christmas obligations she has, or a difficult relationship with the grandparents, or both, then I can understand how she’d be crying. But you’re right that there is something wrong there that should be fixed.
Ever since he hit teenager-age, I give my nephew cash or a gift card for his b-day and Christmas, because when I was a teenager I wanted stuff my parents thought was frivolous. He can spend the cash/gift card however he likes.
Gosh, I guess that sucks. Glad my family doesn’t have major gift-giving expectations attached. We lost those with belief in Santa, because we know that everyone has a list of stuff they’d like to buy themselves, but don’t.
I think there’s a big difference between giving each child a generous gift card directly and giving a lump sum gift card to parents and saying, "“Here, pick out some thoughtful gifts for the grandkids for us, wrap them, and give us the credit for your work.”
I would see the first action as generous and kind, but not the second one. Money doesn’t equal thoughtfulness. They are essentially staffing it out to someone who clearly already feels overwhelmed. If I was your wife, I would take care of it and make sure the kids write thank you notes, but no, I wouldn’t feel grateful for someone giving me a “generous” chore to do. No, scratch that. I would tell my husband to do those things, since it’s his parents.
I also don’t agree with the sentiment that how you feel about something can make you a jerk. Feelings happen whether you want them to or not. It’s your actions in response to those feelings that matter. I sometimes feel hurt by things but logically know I am being unreasonable, so I work through it and move on. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Right. It could be that Manda Jo is right that she’ll feel guilty no matter what, but I still think Frylock should offer to take this off her hands, with assurances that it’ll be fine and everyone will have fun regardless of what happens. And then an impromptu somersault to lighten things up.
The way the note reads, it almost sounds to me like the money is just meant to go towards the gifts from Santa/mom & dad, to offset the expenditure or to allow them to go a bit over-budget. Assuming that those gifts are already purchased, I think exchanging the cards for 4 of them and wrapping them up with a note for each kid to use them for whatever they want will work just fine.
I get where the mom is coming from. Yeah, nice of grandparents to give something, but they basically gave the gift of more shopping. And shopping sucks. It’s true that it’s the thought that counts, and this gift is kinda thoughtless.
I just don’t get it. Gift cards are one of the most common gifts given. Almost everyone I know gives them to someone or another. Apparently some folks have figured out how to live with this terrible burden.
I think it’s different with kids. You can give a gift card to an adult and they will appreciate it as a gift. With kids, gift cards are too abstract to be appreciated the same way. They like tangible things.
I hope to train my future kids to love the hell out of some gift cards, though. Because after a certain point in their development, that might be all they get from me.
No, they gave the gift card to her to shop for the kids. Sending gift cards directly to the kids–however horribly inappropriate, short of Hooters–would have been fine. Telling the wife to pick out presents for the kids means 1) a lot more work for the wife and 2) a real chance that the wife lets them down/disappoints them by buying things the grandparents don’t like. Like, she buys them clothes and sends a thank you and the grandparents are like 'We really wanted them to have something fun" or she buys electronic toys and the grandparents are like “wow, we think that sort of highly priced single use toy is a waste of money”. I have no idea if grandparents are actually like this, but I can see, easily, being worried about it. Also, I can see being worried that if she buys things the kids don’t really love, that’s on her too for disappointing them and “wasting” the money she was given in a way she wouldn’t stress about her own money.
I agree with everyone who says the problem isn’t the gift itself it’s the stress in the way it was presented.
No doubt the grandparents meant well…I mean, they have a history of poor gift giving. Everyone’s grandparents do. They probably figured this would get everyone a step closer to getting something they needed/wanted instead of guessing and missing.
And I also agree that the purchasing of the gifts should not fall on the wife/mom but on Frylock, who is the child of the grandparents in question.
Instead of asking the Internet to rationalize your wife’s behavior, help the poor woman out! Sheesh!
I wonder if “kids these days” aren’t more sophisticated about e-commerce than we were growing up. But one solution might be to invite grandpa and grandma to take the kids on a shopping outing the next time they visit to pick out the gifts. Then Mom and Dad get some time alone.
Or just sit the kids down on the computer and have them pick some stuff out they want. They’ll need to learn how to do this at some point anyway. If the grands live far away, maybe combine that with a Skype visit.
I don’t think it would be big deal if you did this shortly after Christmas, either. Kids get way too much stuff anyway.
It sounds to me that Frylock taking the kids shopping, whether it’s before or after Christmas, wouldn’t work either, because he would be criticized by Mrs. Frylock for buying the kids things she doesn’t approve of, for whatever reason.
Ask me how I know about that. :dubious:
BTW, where was it written in stone that the $400 had to be spent before Christmas? I do think that four $100 cards makes more sense, but maybe they had their own reasons for doing this.