As a form of self-care, I am doing my VERY best to steer clear of news and social media and relatives who like to talk about politics and the state of the world. It may not be SMART to just put my head in the sand, but it is HEALTHIER – for ME – than my previous state of Engaged And Informed But Also On The Edge Of A Panic Attack At Any Given Moment.
So! I am now going to be ostriching myself straight through the holidays! So far, I have managed to not fill my Christmas list up with survivalist gear and have successfully supplanted terrified googling of “what happens if another country bombs us” with endless Buzzfeed lists of What To Get For Some Very Specific Person On Your List.
Anyway!
Snow – actual, heavy snow that is sticking to the ground as I type! – is falling and I’m beginning to feel a tickle of holiday giddiness. But it seems that this year I have some Questions.
We have one set of grandparents whose love language is Financial Planning and another set whose love language is Gifts. I am trying very very hard not to express a preference, because both sets of grandparents are far too generous and kind and thoughtful for me to ever properly express my gratitude. My daughter, my husband, and I are all extraordinarily fortunate to have such loving people in our lives.
But we have TOO MANY TOYS. Too many. I know, I know – when you have kids, there will be toys. Yadda yadda. But it’s beginning to drive me crazy. I feel lucky it’s taken nearly three and half years to reach this point.
What I’m asking here is, have you any advice for… keeping the NEW toys to a minimum?
My husband and I are getting our daughter three gifts. Two are toys, and one is a set of books. That to me feels like PLENTY. Her Financial Planning grandparents have in the past – and we have no expectation of ongoing or future support! I am simply musing on this as a possibility – added some money to Carla’s college fund, and then they may also send A Toy, which I get; they want her to have something to open on Christmas.
And then the Gift Giver Grandparents – The Triple G, if you will – are going to unleash a torrent of toys on my child that I can only envision as a raging river of wooden vegetables and mismatched doll shoes and magna tiles and puzzle pieces and stuffed animals. I’m grateful! Truly! They think of her often and want to delight her and that is WONDERFUL! But. It’s making my chest tight just to think of it.
The other thing is, Carla is three and a half, and she has a limited attention span. She gets bored and, frankly, overwhelmed by the present opening process. I don’t want to be impolite and allow her NOT to open something, when the gift giver is right there, eager to see her little face light up in response to the treasure concealed beneath glittery wrapping paper. But I also don’t want to force her to overload her brain. And it is cranky-making, to be playing happily with one toy, and to have your family prod you into opening something else when you just want to KEEP PLAYING.
Was it last Christmas – no, I think it was two Christmasses ago – when the gift unwrapping took FOREVER. Hours and hours. I thought I might go mad. And poor Carla was SO overwhelmed. (Part of the reason may have been that we had ALL family members here. We have since switched to One Set of Grandparents Per Holiday, which eases the pressure a bit.)
We have asked the Triple G to limit their gifts to THREE, which seems reasonable and will still likely result in my eventual burial beneath a heap of lego blocks and Elsa gloves and doctor tools and My Little Ponies. But – how do I say this kindly, because I KNOW they are simply excited and full of love and generosity and certainly not malice? – they are not hearing us, I don’t think.
What do you DO in that situation?
I recall some other bloggers who did things like… whittle the present pile down to something manageable before Christmas, and then hold out some of the gifts for later in the month/year. I could totally see keeping a few presents in check and then handing them out over the TWO WEEK HOLIDAY BREAK what are we going to DO during all that time OMG.
But… that seems much simpler to accomplish when the gift givers aren’t present. When they are – when they’ve traveled thousands of miles to be with their beloved grandchild on Christmas Day – it seems pretty cold to say, “Nah, we’re going to save your present for next Tuesday.”
(You might say, well, perhaps you could hold back YOUR gifts. To which I say, pfffffffft. No.)
(TANGENT AHOY! I have suddenly thought of a NEW question, which is: who, in your family, is Santa? My in laws have often exchanged gifts with tags from “Rudolph” and “Mrs. Santa” etc. But… I kind of have this selfish feeling that Santa gifts should be from ME AND MY HUSBAND. Is that reasonable? Is that how you do it? Why am I feeling so petulant about Christmas this year?)
(And, if you have children, do you give your child gifts from Santa AND from you? I can’t remember what my parents did! I think mainly it was gifts from Santa.)
One happy option, I suppose, is Hanukkah, which overlaps Christmas this year. Perhaps we could spread out the Christmas gifts over the eight days of Hanukkah? My husband didn’t get a gift every night of Hanukkah when he was growing up, but potentially we could make an exception this year? (Will that set a bad precedent?)
Does that mean I need to get my niece eight Hanukkah gifts, though? That seems excessive. I would certainly not want my sister to feel obligated to get Carla that many presents.
ACK. TOO MANY PRESENTS. Let’s call it all off AND, on top of that, let’s collect all toys we currently own and donate them to charity!
Hmm, I sadly have no advice for you about how to get the Triple Gs to listen and stick to only 3 gifts. But I do have experience with the gift tags that say Rudolph,etc. I also think that Santa should be JUST the parents. We do get the kids presents from us; Santa brings one present and the stockings.
My parents-in-law were the same with the gifts from Rudolph, etc. and when the kids couldn’t read, I just would give the present to them and tell them it was from Grandmum & Gramps. When they could read, but Grandmum and Gramps weren’t present in person, I changed out the gift tags after the presents arrived at my house so they no longer said Mrs. Claus – I even re-wrapped if that was necessary.
And then when the year finally arrived where they were in the house on Christmas Day, I called them in advance and explained that our family traditions are that Santa does the stockings and one gift, and that they are all wrapped in one particular paper (stocking items included) and have been since the oldest was a newborn (ahoy, Costco giant roll of paper) and that in order to preserve the belief in Santa because it’s magical, etc., could they please not wrap anything and label it as being from Santa or Mrs. Claus or Blitzen or anyone else Santa related? I played up the “we likely only have a year left”, “don’t want to make them more suspicious than they are”, really stressed that this is “magical time for your grandchildren, don’t spoil it” angle and they did listen. Shockingly. They might have been offended, but they did listen.
Oooh that is GREAT advice. I think I will talk to my husband about doing a special “Santa” wrapping paper and then spreading the word to the in-laws. (I guess we will have to coordinate with my sister on the Santa paper, too, since her daughter will get Santa gifts too…)
I feel your pain, both about head in the sand and the gift giving conundrums. One thought that I’ve had is to let people give what gifts they want to give, and gratefully accept them. But, once the gift is given, I can control what happens to it. I can pack up toys and books in boxes, rotate them through active play so that they don’t just get scattered. And even quietly donate the ones that I hate. It’s my house and my sanity, and I can choose to release myself of the guilt. I am hoping others will have advice about the gift unwrapping situation. My daughter will turn 2 just before Christmas so this is the first year where I think people will have ‘expectations’ about it.
YES, you are so right! I suppose I can just grit my teeth for the duration of the visit and then rotate some of the toys out. I am planning on putting away the bulk of the current toys before Christmas, anyway.
We try really hard to politely communicate ahead of time. We’ve suggested the “One want, one need, one read for three gifts total” and we always suggest experience-gifts whenever asked. Experience gifts are the best, particularly memberships or swim lessons, or other fun things like that. My parents have often paid for our zoo membership, which they give along with a small stuffed zoo animal – all in all, pretty good for everyone!
We also have a robust Amazon wish-list for the little lady, which we keep mostly stocked with books (I don’t like toy clutter but you can never have enough books) and art supplies (which are a toy that runs out and needs replenishing) to help as well. All in all, this approach has served us pretty well.
You can NEVER have too many books. Whenever someone asks what they should get Carla, I say BOOKS.
The gift-opening is going to be kind of a miserable experience. Not much way around it, I don’t think, if the grandparents are THERE and have gotten tons of things to open.
But 3.5-year-olds cannot remember all of the things that they open. I “clean up” and in the process pack away a lot of the toys – maybe only until next Tuesday when we’re stir crazy, but still. You can even just put them away in her room in a place that seems natural if the grandparents go looking, then truly hide them away when grandma and grandpa go home.
If the kids remember a specific toy and ask for it, I just go get it. And maybe try to hide something else in it’s place 🙂
Genius.
I WANT to answer these questions, but I am too busy putting my head between my knees and breathing deeply.
The only thing I have learned, from dealing with three, no FOUR different branches of family tree, is that there is no way to control other people’s gift-giving. You can give input, but gifters gonna gift, and if you make rules they’re gonna find a way around it. Not that it’s not worth it to try, with the rules. But good to be resigned about the outcome, I’ve found.
The upside is that the absolute worst-case scenario here is that the child gets overwhelmed on Christmas, and has to open presents to the point of overload and reduced enjoyment, instead of playing immediately. That’s the sort of thing that’s okay in the long run, and doesn’t seem to cause any permanent mental/emotional damage.
For mediating the effect somewhat, I have two methods. First method: have several SESSIONS of opening: maybe one in the morning, then breakfast and playtime, then a second session after lunch, then more playing, then a third session whenever-and-etc.-and-so-on. You can up the anticipation by saying, “You can open TWO PRESENTS now, and then we have to wait until after lunch!” It does mean for a CRAZY-MAKING day where it feels like the gift-unwrapping is a chore that NEVER ENDS—but at least there are breaks, for both the parents and the child.
Another option is to prep the child: “FIRST we open all the presents. THEN we play with them later. You will WANT to play with them right away, and that is NATURAL. But the way we do it is, first we unwrap everything, and then we play.” Say this one hundred times before Christmas, and another hundred times during Christmas.
We have used both of these methods over the years. No matter what, in my experience it’s exhausting. It gets somewhat better later on, especially if you (or your siblings or siblings-in-law) add more grandchildren to dilute the issue.
“Gifters gonna gift” will become my Getting Through This mantra. Makes me giggle, too, which is a bonus.
I’m also trying to get everyone to reign it in for gods sake on the presents please, but I’m not sure I’m getting through. For the last couple years we’ve let the boys open all the presents, but then whisked some away immediately thereafter to be brought out again in a slow trickle over the winter/spring. This seemed to work because they were little/forgetful/easily distracted. I’m worried we may be aging out of this strategy however.
I have weirdly strong feelings about the Santa thing too. Mom and Dad get to be Santa. We always had one big gift from Santa (plus stocking stuffers). All the rest came from the parents. And Santa’s gifts are NOT wrapped, just placed fully assembled, all magical and ready to go, under the tree. Husband always wants to wrap Santa’s gifts and this irks me for some reason.
I *think* my parents did the same thing – Santa’s gifts arrived fully assembled but unwrapped. I really LIKE that idea. But I think, like you, my husband has a different vision of what Santa does. We’ll have to have a Serious Santa Conversation to straighten all this stuff out.
Oh, I relate to this so much. My MIL would go overboard like this with too many presents. Still does, if I’m honest, and it bothers the kids now (12 and 8) because they hear us talking during the year that G doesn’t really have a lot of money. Sigh.
But I had to let it go a long time ago, and let her have her fun. Back in the day, I could eventually hide/remove the (thousand) Happy Meal toys and my kids wouldn’t even notice. Now I also think, well, she probably feels like “you only live once,” and she rather enjoy giving gifts than worry over money… (?). Maybe I can learn from this attitude… maybe. 😉
Good luck. I agree “Santa” should be from YOU. (MIL also does fully-filled stockings, in addition to the stockings that WE own and hang by the chimney with care (and fill). Drives me crazy.)
Oh the stockings! My husband’s mom is SUCH a stocking person. This year, my husband even suggested that he and I do NOTHING for the stockings and just let his mom take care of it. Which. *I* want to be involved in the stocking situation! It’s fun!