My son’s birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks here, and I have no idea what to get him. I asked him to provide me with a list of ten things he’d like, and this is what I got:
Playstation Portable and game: Grand theft Auto, Liberty City Stories
Laptop
Skateboard
Drum set
TV
Green Day CD, “Dookie”
Cell phone
Tech Deck (little plastic skateboards)
Game: Pokemon Mystery Blue Dungeon for DS
?
Out of that list, the only possibles are the skateboard and the CD. I’d really like to stay away from things with screens! As his mom, I feel he spends too much time playing video games and watching TV already. Aren’t there any cool *toys * anymore? Please help. If you leave it up to me, the poor kid’s going to wind up with nothing but books and clothes.
They still have Teck Deck? My son (now 20) used to like those when he was in the 5th and 6th grades. Another thing he liked around that same time was yo-yos, believe it or not. A good one wasn’t cheap, as I recall ($20 -$30), and there was a bit of a fad going at his school for them. Get your son one and maybe he can start a fad at his school.
I think it’s cool that your 10 y.o. son is already exploring the back catalogue of a band he likes. I presume that he’s starting from American Idiot. When I was 10, I just listened to the local top 40 station and didn’t hold any real opinions on music.
Wait a sec, you have like the coolest kid ever! He’s apparently way into gaming, and the drum set thing is totally awesome.
I vote for the drum set + lessons. There’s much to be said for musical stimulation, especially at such a young age. Maybe you could keep the set out in the garage or someplace else where it won’t be so noisy to the rest of the household.
No offense intended but…
Oh please don’t buy them! I’m a science specialist in an elementary school and every freaking January I get bunches of parents coming in with donations of the science kits their kids got and won’t play with. Because there’s nothing to play with! The activities are canned, the reactions take forever to occur and, mostly, they’ve taken all the fun—and dangerous—stuff out that used to make chemistry kits so, ummmm, interesting.
How about lots of K’nex? Or, what we gave our 2 boys on their 10th birthday, a hatchet? We got them their own pocket knifes when they were 8 and their own cordless drills when they were 9. They both learned to build stuff and have continued into teenage and young adulthood. My oldest just built me a beautiful Japanese looking arched foot bridge that he designed himself. My youngest is into woodworking too. Beats the hell out of Grand Theft Auto.
Gotta say I go along with the electric drum pad concept–not too expensive and great for the highly kinetic episodes ten year old boys are prone to…
If you have hills and parks with hills, you might want to consider a mountain board instead of a regular skateboard. The one I linked to is a bit expensive, I found one for quite a bit less than that. Mountain boards have a really smooth ride, work beautifully as regular transportation on paved streets, have brakes (which is uber cool, and the brake handle keeps the skateboard from zooming off on its own in case of a biff,) and best of all are almost impossible to use in urban stunt boarding–much less chance of a ruptured testicle that way, y’see… I got one for my ten year old grandkid and he has a great time with it.
Ten is the perfect age to get the “slightly too advanced and large for you” big boy bike–my personal preference is the mountain bike. I’ve found decent bikes at Wallymart and Toys Sure “R” Spendy for under $75.00 and having the most dangerous/fun bike on the block is great cachet for a kid. Then he’ll grow into the bike and by that time it’ll have become a major mode of transportation for him–should keep him occupied until it’s time to worry about a driver’s license.
If a new laptop is out of the question, how about a gently used one from EBay? Upgrade the HDD and add memory to most older 'puters and they’re simply spiff for a kid–this does presuppose that someone in the family is savvy about installing OS and software for a kid computer, though.
We got Junior a neat digital camcorder for his tenth birthday as well, not too spendy for a decent one and it’s fun as all get out for him to take footage, download it onto his computer and then mess around with it–he’s learning Flash animation and it helps having his own images to muck about with.
Yeah, we’re athletic geeks around here, why do you ask?
When my mum wanted to buy a present for my step-son (who was seven at the time), she did something I thought was pretty cool for a seventy year-old with no knowledge of what’s cool for little boys - she went into a toy shop, approached a little boy, and simply asked, “what’s cool?”
If there is a veterans park or kids park in your area that is doing the Fundraising by Buying a Brick thing, you could immortalize his birthday forever by buying a brick.
That would be cool and show him that all gifts don’t have to be directly related to him, but others.
Um, maybe I’m just old fashioned, but what’s wrong with giving a child books?
By the age of ten, I loved 'em. By that age, my kids loved 'em. My nieces and nephews always get books for Christmas and birthdays. (Well, almost always. The one time I thought I’d do something different, my fourteen year old nice looked disappointed and asked “Uncle Khangol, why didn’t I get a book?”) And eventually, we had to get the kids their own bookcases, of course, which made another special birthday present.
I always find good, hardcover editions of books they can keep for a lifetime. Sometimes I get lucky and snag a classic first edition that has been signed by the author. And I always write something in the flyleaf, to commemorate the event and personalize the book as something special from me to them.
In my experience, most kids will learn to love reading, and make it a lifelong habit, if they’re given good books from early on, and see that they are special treasures, far more valuable than a piece of digital plastic that eats batteries and will be broken or obsolete in a year. Books last, and the adventures and memories they give kids last even longer.
(Of course, when I was ten I got my first telescope, and that was very cool too.)
My 10-year-old is still obsessed with Legos, particularly Bionicles. He spends most of his allowance on them. Lego obligingly comes out with a new set every few months.
I like reading too, just in case anyone was wondering, but I guess I’m even more old-fashioned. What’s wrong with giving a child what he wants? A skateboard, even bowing to Dung Beetle’s inevitable compulsion to be all responsible and everything and buy a helmet and knee-and-elbow-pads along with it, is affordable, encourages movement and encountering the outdoors, and can be just dangerous enough to satisfy every ten-year-old boy’s urge to be brave. Some cheaper skateboards are sold unfinished, and then there’s an art project as well.
Off the asked-for list, every ten-year-old boy I’ve ever met was a sucker for a deck of cards, a silver dollar, and a book of simple magic tricks.
Good luck, Dung Beetle: just remember, you’re Mom, and he loves you – everything you do is right.
