Currently my daughter has more than thirty presents–-many of them quite expensive–-under the tree, and there will be more before it’s done. I still have to get her a gift. I also suspect that there will be presents for my daughter at my mother-in-law’s house as well. Plus whatever’s in the stockings in at least two houses.
Okay, fine. My daughter’s not yet one-year-old. She can’t really get spoiled at this point (with regards to material goods anyway). Also, people are going crazy because she’s my first child and is probably for many people in my family the last baby–-no more grand-babies, nieces, etc.
Still, I have a feeling that the generosity of my relatives and relatives-in-law will do anything but abate over the coming years. My nieces and nephew, God bless them, are spoiled rotten. You can barely even see the tree at my mother-in-law’s house for all the presents the children get. It’s ridiculous.
Or is it? How many presents, really, are too many? Christmas only comes once a year and it should be a happy time for the greedy little monst–-um, little angels. But still . . . thirty presents? And I mean BIG presents. Please. After my little one rips open her Christmas take, she’ll have more electronic equipment than me, and she can’t even walk yet!
And please remember, I don’t think my family’s outrageous generosity will be limited to just this year. Rather, I think this is the beginning of a trend. And I don’t like it. And everybody says I’m wrong on this. But I’m not. Am I?
And how come Mom and Dad never gave me thirty-plus presents when I was little?
My dad used to do this for my children, too. The Christmas that my older daughter was three, she opened something like ten or eleven presents and then just flat-out refused to even look at any more. She was done opening and she wanted to play. It got to the point that we started the custom of having two or three Christmases, essentially, opening some presents from my dad and his wife (who didn’t usually visit Christmas morning) on Christmas Eve and then finishing up a day or two after Christmas.
My children are nine and thirteen this year. My dad died five years ago, and they remember him moderately well, but they feel really close to the three grandparents who don’t overload them with gifts. Those are the grandparents who spend time with them, and that’s what really matters to children. Those grandparents (and the aunts and uncles) also care enough about the kids to be concerned that they not turn out spoiled. We have a general rule of thumb that no one gives the children more than two presents each (and although sometimes the grandmas will get just one more thing they couldn’t resist buying, they try to keep it small). They ask Santa for the one thing that their hearts desire, and he’s come through every year so far - although we did have discussions early on about how we can’t expect Santa to get things that are too lavish or expensive, since he does have to get something for every child.
I’m not quite sure how you can dissuade your relatives from doing this - a lot of people, like my dad, like to show love by giving children things. I suppose you could let them know that you believe your daughter’s one true desire is a good education, and convince them to contribute to her college fund (you DO have a college fund, right? Consult your tax advisor).
Children who have too much stuff (as mine did for many years) tend not to appreciate what they have. Early next year, maybe you can open a dialogue with family members about how you’d like to examine what you’re teaching your daughter about material possessions. If you can get her mom (you’re the dad, right?) on board first, you may be able to at get the rest of the family to at least tone it down a little.
[sub]Your parents probably never got you that many presents when you were little because (a) they couldn’t afford it back then and (b) they didn’t want to spoil you. You might remind them about that.[/sub]
Some of these ideas are really sweet. Like having a grandparent get the child a book, and including a tape where the grandparent reads the book out loud.
As you said, at this age she’s not going to get spoiled. But in the future you may have to limit how many gifts other people get her.
For a start, tell them she should get more gifts from YOU. Explain that you don’t want her to get 5 gifts from a grandparent and only 3 from you.
The more important thing, really, is teaching her to be able to get rid of things. If she gets 30-40 gifts each Christmas, that means 20-30 things she needs to throw away or donate to charity before the next Christmas. You don’t want her room so full of toys she can’t play.
You will find it difficult to tell your generous, loving relatives not to buy so many gifts. But you will find it harder to tell them she’s thrown them all away to make room for the next batch. It’s much better to limit the amount they buy, and guide them into buying the right kind of gifts. (The “right kind” of gift being your and your daughter’s decision.)
Boy Mephisto, I have this problem too. You really can’t see the tree at my mother-in-law’s for all the presents. I don’t think she’s trying to buy the kids’ (2–a 3yr. old and 1yr old) love. She spends lots of of time with them and is a great roll-around-the-floor-with-you grandma. They do love her. My mother-in-law loves to shop and is very generous and has a lot of money. We all get an absurd amount of presents. The main thing I dislike about it is that I think it makes my parents who buy a reasonable number of presents (and have less money) feel like small potatoes. And it does discourage me from buying them gifts.
I think it’s totally reasonable to ask your gift givers to restrain themselves. Not that I can bring myself to do this. I return what I think I can get away with, keep a lot stored away (in theory to be rotated out into the play cycle), give some to the thrift store and live with more clutter than I would like.
Why would you still need to get her a gift if there are 30 presents under the tree already? She is not even a year old. She can’t read yet. Just tell her that a couple are from you.
I don’t think that there is anything wrong with the little one getting lots of gifts. It takes more then material goods to raise a spoiled child. It is perfectly possible to raise a polite, well adjusted, caring and generous child who gets lots of Christmas presents.
However, she is your child and if you think that it is too much then it is. I wouldn’t start a war over it but I don’t think that talking to her grandparents about it is a bad thing.
We have this problem too and we have three different grandparent households buying besides ourselves. I’m going to hold some back for birthdays. My mom and her husband litterally bought 20 presents for the boys all by themselves. It’s really annoying as we don’t have room for one and secondly, other people would like to buy things for the kiddos with out having to worry that they’re just repeating a gift.
We used to go crazy when our Perfect Child[sup]TM[/sup] was little - but there were so many neat toys out there… yeah, we were a bit out of control. And for a while, she was the only grandchild on either side, so there was lots of gifting. Thankfully, she’s not spoiled.
It’s scaled down over the years. She’s got 3 cousins now, and all of the grandparents are retired, so there’s less to lavish on the kid. And she seems to get more joy from buying gifts for others, so that’s good for her. We gave her a CD burner early - we wanted to make sure it worked, and she’s got 3 packages under the tree from us. So it can be controlled and constrained… Just takes time and changing finances.
Thanks for the responses people. I knew I was right!
LOL! You think like me. A month or so ago–prior to everybody’s credit card abuse–no presents had been bought for anybody. I told my wife, half kidding, that we should cancel Christmas in honor of poverty. She said no, we had to at least have stuff for my daughter–and pictures, so someday the little one could look back on her first Christmas and see how good it was. My response was, “Hell, let’s just get some empty boxes and wrap them up all pretty then . . . she’ll never know.” So my wife hit me . . .
I really don’t get why my in-laws, who most definitely are not rich, spoil their grandkids like this. If they really want to spend hundreds of dollar (or more) on their grandkids, they could do it in so many other ways . . . like contributing to college funds, as InternetLegend suggested.
I’m also like Leifsmama in that my house isn’t big enough for too many more extravagant gifts. My daughter’s bedroom is already jam-packed with stuff and the livingroom looks like
Toys “R” Us vomited into it half the time.
Anyway, I’m gonna tell the four grandparents to knock it off. And they’ll probably ignore me. After all, my in-laws think I’m weird because I wanted to waste Christmas by helping out at the shelter last year . . . that’s not what the holidays are supposed to be about, you know. My parents will just roll their eyes, call me a Grinch, and mail off an extra hundred dollars’ worth of toys to spite me.
On the positive side, it will be fun watching my daughter ripping open all those gifts and making an all-night party out of playing with the $2.73 worth of cardboard and wrapping paper.
As a philosophy, and as a way of keeping her kids from asking for too much, a woman I work with says this:
“how many presents did baby Jesus get? Three!”
“Anybody think they are better than him?”
There were a few years when our boys were young where we had the too many gifts problem. What I did was let them choose a few fav’s. Then had them pick a few to give to charity (still new in the boxes) and then I put the rest in the attic until school let out so that at the beginning of summer break, they had “new” games and toys.
This year our son will get two from us, two from the grandparents on each side and one from the cousins on each side of the family, none of them very expensive.
My mum goes insane at Christmas. The last time I spent Christmas in Montreal, i walked away with a garbage bag full of loot. My wife’s bag was just as big.
And I didn’t even ask for anything. In fact, I kept telling my mum that I didn’t want anything at all, since I didn’t need anything.
But I finally tracked down the reason last year. Apparently, when I was 4 years old and we were celebrating Christmas at an aunt’s, I started to cry because I got fewer gifts than the other kids. So now my mum spends the same amount on everyone, and makes sure they all get the same number of gifts.
I told my mum that I’m very unlikely to cry anymore about being shafted on presents, seeing as how I’m in my 20s and all…
But still . . . thirty presents? And I mean BIG presents. Please. After my little one rips open her Christmas take, she’ll have more electronic equipment than me, and she can’t even walk yet!