I think that a cheap gift, if it’s carefully chosen, can be every bit as much fun as a more expensive gift. I think that the grandparents acknowledge that having a toy now is great, so they give a toy now. But they are also looking ahead to when having thousands in the college fund will also be appreciated.
For what it’s worth, my 7-year-old has no idea what things cost, or really that their value is related to the cost. When given an opportunity to choose something for herself in the toy store recently (that I was paying for - I would have gone up to $15 or $20), she picked out a $2 bag of water balloons (had a great time with it, too). Her great-grandmother is on a fixed income and unable to spend a lot of gifts, and I don’t think my daughter has ever noticed a discrepancy between what she gets from her and what she gets from us. I think there’s definitely some projection going on in your evaluation of what’s a “cruddy gift”.
I couldn’t disagree more. 7 and 9 is not too young to learn what a college fund is and to understand why it’s important. It’s also not too young to learn to graciously accept any gifts in the spirit in which they are given.
I may be filtering it through my own experience, which wasn’t one of material excess at all. I’d usually opt for money or a particular item if I could when I was younger, although I don’t recall what I was into very well at 7.
I guess part of it is that the in-laws are pretty wealthy in their own right, and my BIL/SIL are fairly affluent as well. Nobody’s hurting for money here; the MIL is just kind of a cheapskate in many ways, and this strikes me as something that sounds good, but is probably a bit of a let down for the kids, and that’s probably me imagining how a 7 or 9 year old me would have thought about it.
I’m not trying to imply that college money is a bad gift exactly, just one that’s not really appreciated by young children, that’s all.
I’m trying and failing not to be annoyed at your continuing implication that a $15 gift is “cruddy” because it costs $15. Some of my kids’ most favored gifts over the years have been in that price range. And trust me, if any if my kids ever got sniffy about how a gift wasn’t appreciated because it wasn’t in the correct price range, that would be the end of expensive gifts for that child until they demonstrated that they know how to be gracious and appreciative of any gifts given them, regardless the cost.
Look, I think I see what you’re saying. You know the aunt and uncle I mentioned, who were embarrassed that grandma couldn’t afford to give a hundred bucks to their kids? Guess what they gave *me *every year for Christmas? Nothing. Well, technically, they gave us a gift for “the family”, and I suppose I could have requested my share - it was always a case of wine. After all, my parents didn’t drink, so it’s not like they wanted it. Now that’s a cruddy child present. And my parents would joke about it privately with us, how silly it was that my aunt and uncle would do this every year. But they always thanked them graciously, and if we had ever dared to say, “Why don’t *we *ever get anything from Aunt and Uncle?”, we would never have heard the end of it. Because ultimately, no one owes you a gift. This was an important lesson for us to learn, even though it sucked learning it, and it’s made me much more appreciative of everything I do receive, not just at birthdays, but in life.
the MIL is just kind of a cheapskate in many ways
But they add several hundred dollars to the education fund each, as well as buying a token gift - so think of it as $315 or $420 or even $210.
How they proportion their gift is between them and the parents.
It strikes me as very generous, in all honestly probably because that’s the same siuation I settled on with my parents, a small gift and large contribution to my kid’s education.
She doesn’t need big gifts now, but she will need all the help we can give her to afford a higher education - she knows she’s expected to go to university, she knows she’ll have to work while she’s studying. Any contribution her grandparents make is definitely a gift for her.
Agreed. There are cheap (in quality) things that you could give a 7-year-old at both $15 and $30. My niece used to come home from her Christmas visit with her father’s family with a bag full of presents from them, most of which were of crappy quality (even if some of them were undoubtedly expensive). She didn’t really appreciate those presents, and a lot of them quickly got sent to Goodwill.
My advice is don’t get so hung up on the absolute dollar value of those gifts. Did some thought go into the selection of that $15 gift? Is it something which the kid will actually enjoy, and not just get chucked into the toy bin with everything else after the newness wears off?
And, in all seriousness, does a 7-year-old really “get” which things cost $15 vs. $30?
It’s an awesome gift. They are investing in the children’s future. Yes you’re ungrateful.
Kids ALWAYS get bored of their toys no matter is the toy costs 15.00 or 40.00.
No. For my niece and nephew when a birthday comes up the birthday child gets an appropriately large gift and the other always gets something small.
Both niece and nephew have always been delighted with their $10 LuLuLemon headband or $10 lego kit.
If the OP can’t think of cool gifts for kids for about $15, he’s not thinking very hard.
The parents should be working with their kids to be sure that they do appreciate what their grandparents are giving them; the gift of education. My grandfather did exactly the same thing, when I was a kid. A small gift now, and a savings bond for college. As far back as I can remember, I had at least a vague idea what that meant.
I bet your niece and nephew have a ton of toys and other stuff already. Another bike/doll house/video game will be cheered for a short while, maybe only minutes until the next present gets opened and something else catches their attention.
So let me get this straight.
You honestly believe that the grandparents –instead of putting money aside for college- should drop a couple of hundred dollars on Power Rangers, video games, and iTune gift cards since this what the kids really want.
And the rationale from your OP is that when you were 10, you wouldn’t have appreciated some dippy college fund. But I ask: don’t you see things a bit different now that a whole year has passed?
I was just going to pop in to say this- our daughter gets things like DSi’s and games from me, and hardly ever plays them- she gets little bits of string and beads from the little machines for a quarter ($0.25) and gets much more enjoyment from those…
Who is to say that the kids aren’t much more in sync with the grandparents, and vice versa, than you are with either? Do your kids seem to care, or is this, as it seems from the post, all about what you think should be happening?
I don’t know if they get it, but I know they don’t care. My niece and nephew just recently had their seventh birthday, and for both of them their favorite gift was the $5 mylar balloon. A balloon. Over video games, bicycles, makeup kits, princess dresses.
Uh, yeah. You’re ungrateful. I get that you’re sensitive - everyone has sensitivities from childhood - but loans your kids would have to take out would be paid by them, not by you, so it is a gift to the kids.
Even if it’s not even enough to buy a semester’s worth of books, it’ll come in handy for the semester they can’t find a job or the weekend they want a $20 meal to make them feel human instead of a shitty $5 pizza.
Question – how do your nieces and nephews react when they get these “cruddy” gifts? :rolleyes:
There are eleven grandkids on my dad’s side – we usually got clothes. (I never really cared, because they were usually pretty nice ones, and I’ve always been a clothes horse). However, once we hit a certain age, my grandmother just started giving us money.
But let me ask you this? Does Grandma do other things for the kids? Things that AREN’T about money? When I think of MY grandmother, I remember the time when I was five and lost my first tooth. I was too scared to let my parents push it out – I was afraid it would hurt. So my dad asked if I wanted to get Grandma to do it – and since she was a nurse’s aid, I figured she’d know what to do. She came up to our house without a question, even though it was pretty early in the morning, and her hair was still in curlers.
Or how she always kept the extra printer paper from work (remember the old dot matrix printers, with the paper that you had to rip apart?), and would give it to us kids so we always had drawing paper.
She always had ice cream in the freezer for us kids, and didn’t care if we jumped on our grandfather’s recliner.
On my mom’s side, my grandfather would take me to the playground, and since there wasn’t anyone else on the seesaw, he’d use his arm as a counterweight. He died when I was seven, and I remember him getting sick and hated seeing him like that. The best gift I remember him giving me was a giant stuffed rooster (yes, a rooster, shut up!) that he won at a street fair when I was three. I loved that thing and I bet he spent all of three bucks to win it.
That’s not to say my grandparents weren’t generous – they were. But that’s not what I remember about them the most. Hell, my grandmother (maternal) is 92 and she STILL tries to slip me money.
I tried putting it back into her buffet drawer, but she caught on to that. Now I just take it and use it when we go groccery shopping for her.
I hate to pull the whole, “money isn’t everything”, but other than their monetary status, what kind of grandparents are they?
Someday their grandparents won’t be there anymore and what do you think they’ll remember most? An expensive toy, or a “cruddy toy” and an aid in getting a college education?
I can only imagine how MY grandparents would have reacted to this kind of rant!
Flip side: ever give your niece that $75 Lego set that she’s been begging for for months (yes, $75 for Lego, and that’s not even the priciest set by a longshot :rolleyes:), only to find out that within a week all the pieces have just been mixed up with the rest of the huge heap of toys that their “fairly affluent” parents and other relatives give them every single birthday and christmas?
That’ll make you start thinking more highly of a college fund real quick.
Yeah, jumping on the bandwagon here to say your attitude is dickish.
This, a thousand times this, among other things.
I think the disconnect here comes in the form of pure and simple projection; you as an adult perceive the gift as “cheap”, so the child must too.
No. Children at that age absolutely are innocent of the cost/value of things, but somehow we have become a society in which the common mindset is, “We must please the child’s current tastes for the child to be happy”. A kid has some stupid bauble to unwrap, and he’s fine, and then immediately forgets where it came from and moves on to the next bauble. That’s fine… that’s the mindset of a kid. They don’t attach all this angst to gift-giving that many adults do. If for some reason a child is evaluating and reacting to a gift based on its perceived cost or cheapness, that dickish behavior is learned directly from some dickish adult in that kid’s life.
In fact, it’s been my experience that as a child hits those more “aware” years, like 12, 13, 14, the well-raised ones can very capably look at the lame gifts like socks or whatever and smile politely and say, “Thank you” and not think another thing about it.
And this business about college money, “the child won’t see a dime of it”… that’s bullshit. Of course he will see it. At age 18 when the college planning comes into play, mom and dad say, “there’s $1000 sitting in an account for you from Grandma. When you go to the bookstore to buy your books, that should cover it”. I think at age 18 it will be amply appreciated, and that’s terrific.
Or “that will cover your spending money for your first tri/semester/year.” Or “and you’ll be able to use it for Spring Break.” Or “it will go to tuition, but when you get out that will be that much less in student loans.”
My cousin and her husband are pretty well off - and frugal. They NEVER spend as much as their income would imply. Her sister and husband are not as well off - also frugal, but not as “well employed.” Their parents are pretty well off and for years have been giving the grandkids a “token gift” and money towards college.
About five years ago my well off cousin had her kids college funds completely funded. And so they now get a token gift. And her sisters kids get twice as much money in their college funds. At her request.
But they aren’t just getting college money. From the kid’s POV, they are getting a present. Is the kid really going to say, “You only spent FIFTEEN DOLLARS – MY GIFTS HAVE TO BE THIRTY DOLLARS AT LEAST!” If they’re the kind of kid who makes you get two Bone Storms because they aren’t sharing with Caitlin, maybe.