The Dilemma of Inappropriate Gifts: What To Do When Your Child Receives A Gift You Don’t Agree Wtih
“Come back and play with me!” the plaintive voice called out to my two-year-old. Now, that might have been cute if it was his young buddy calling, but in this case it was a toy–a toy that never should have been in our lives to begin with.
Mr. Big Blocks
Our brief (and too-long) relationship with “Mr. Big Blocks” was the curse of my brother’s ex-girlfriend trying to show some goodwill. The toy is an electronic keyboard with light-up keys and pre-programmed rhythms and tunes. It also has a special program that calls out to the child after five minutes of non-use, imploring him to leave whatever new creative activity has captured his imagination and come back to this plastic dominatrix.
The only thing worse than the toy is the fact that the ex selected it for our family. Yes, it was nice that she thought of us, and yes, she did honor our interest in music, but the gift showed a total lack of respect for our values and our intentional parenting path. She even acknowledged it in the card:
“I know you don’t like plastics or electronics or light-up toys, but I just couldn’t resist.”
What Do We Do with a Lame Toy?
Since she was on her way out of the family, we were able to just send a thank-you and leave it at that. But with relatives who will always be in our lives, there is a delicate balance between being polite and educating others about our values and perspectives. We quietly threw away the big vat of bubble gum from an aunt last year without telling her and then faced the same problem and the exact same bubble gum again this year. Perhaps if we had gently let her know our qualms about bubble gum and redirected her loving intentions, this year she could have found something that would bring joy.
Ultimately, who was she trying to please–our family, or herself? If she had truly wanted to give a gift that would work in our household, she would have found a wooden recorder or a marimba set or something similar…a gift that would fit into our family’s focus on natural toys that encourage creativity and toys that call to the child with opportunity, not with a badly recorded electronic voice.
Trash It
In this real example, keeping the ghastly toy was not an option. In the long run, it is healthier for us to maintain consistency in our home and playroom rather than have a few oddball toys that send a conflicting message to our children (and our relatives).
Something as powerful as Mr. Big Blocks had to go right away. Some other toys can simply be put further back on the shelf, then quietly removed. Batteries can run out quickly and not be replaced.
What to Tell the Kids
Luckily, our toddler was young enough that the toy could just disappear, but this is not the case with older children (or, some would argue, even with toddlers). We increasingly find ourselves explaining our beliefs to our children and listening to their reasons for wanting to keep the toys. Sometimes, we come to an agreement that the toy would be better suited for another family, and sometimes we unfortunately have to force the decision on them and explain that it is our responsibility to guide them and create a healthy environment.
No matter how we explain it, we always honor the intention of the gift-giver: that person loves you enough to give you a gift and just has a different understanding about what children need than our family does. They are not wrong–they just missed the boat this time.
Think Before You Give
Finally, if we hope to have our values respected, we need to equally respect other families’ values in our gift-giving. Let’s all strive to give gifts that fit into their respective households. They need to respect the receiving family’s values and needs, not just the giver’s. A true gift of the heart is one that listens to and touches the heart of the receiver.
[Photo by ||!prliignore0||]
The copyright of the article The Dilemma of Inappropriate Gifts: What To Do When Your Child Receives A Gift You Don’t Agree Wtih in Family is owned by Carrieanddanielle.com. Permission to republish The Dilemma of Inappropriate Gifts: What To Do When Your Child Receives A Gift You Don’t Agree Wtih in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
Read more at Carrie and Danielle: Family
January 22nd, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Thank you for this! My children continue to receive inappropriate movies from grandma-and its my fault! I have yet to develop the gumption to tell her not only do I monitor the amount of time they spend in front of the t.v., but disapprove of their violent nature. Grandma, its time we talk!
January 22nd, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Great post – we teach our daughters to say thank you…and then soon after, we donate the toy in question.
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:35 am
I've encountered the same problem. But I've always let the toy stay. Kids grow tired of most toys so fast that it was never a problem. We had decided that our son would never have a toy gun. And others stuck with that. But one day his older daughters bought him a squirt gun – really there was nothing we could do about that. Yes, its important to impart your own values to your children, but they are part of the world with different values.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:54 am
I think this is a tough problem that a lot of parents face. I read TONS of blogs this xmas season with bloggers worried about how to say no to generous family members when they wanted to keep things simple. Apparently, people get easily offended, but I don't really understand why. Many parents choose to request contributions to the child's education savings account, or just ask for less. Unfortunately even this kind of request seemed to bring resentment quite often. I still think that in some cases it is entirely appropriate to speak up, though.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:42 am
We teach our kids to wash their hands and say thanks, sorry like manners right from the age of 1, I am quite lucky that my daughters easily follow as I say!
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Our family has been great about directing the majority of their gift budget toward the kids' education fund – something the kids will be truly grateful for later. But they also want and deserve the immediate joy and connection that a wrapped present brings – something we try to respect, albeit with the issues raised above.
January 30th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Hey Rick! I enjoy reading your thoughts, and staying a bit in touch with your family's journey! We've also struggled with issues like this over the years, same as others, and I've been on many posts of the fence along the way. These days, my thoughts about the subject are a bit less absolute, though I can appreciate where you're coming from and WISH everyone would respect my wishes with gifts! However, a couple of things….
a) after years of being critical and sending out specific wishlists/guidelines I now find most of my extended family giving up as they don't understand where we're coming from and don't want to offend us. And although in all honesty, I like the lack of material goods, I wonder if I have hindered their relationship with my child in the alienation, if that makes sense. Now i wish I would have left things alone a bit and let my kids form their own relationship with them, including re: gifts.
b) as my kids get older, I'm realizing that perhaps I should step back a bit – yes, there's an ideal for my home that I'd like to maintain, and I can control what *I* buy and how I set up our home – but my kids have their own ideas of what they would like and who they are – and they also have their own specific relationships with family members that I value far more than the things that I disagree with. So they get toys that I don't love, perhaps we talk about what I don't love about them, but ultimately the kids love it and want it, it's special because it comes from a grandparent, I suck it up.
Obviously, it's easy for toys that aren't loved to quietly disappear, and batteries have often not been replaced. However, I now believe that the actual toys themselves are not quite as powerful as I once thought them to be, and it's a lesson for me in realizing that I don't have as much control as I originally thought – there's many differing personalities making up this little family. I dunno, perhaps where I differ is in the definition of who the receiver is, because I have a couple of daughters who LOVE to receive gifts that *I* would never choose!!!!!! And now my comment is almost as long as your article…….!!!
January 31st, 2009 at 5:55 am
Thanks for this, Erica. I've decided to send you the Mr. Big Blocks – when you were here your kids found it in the closet and were really covetting it. I know it's much too big for the RV that the 5 of you are travelling around North America in for the next year, and probably much too noisy for such a closed-quarters existence, but heck, the kids'll love me for it.
(a) Seriously, I agree that the kids' relationships with their families is the most important, just not that gifts need to be such a core way of establishing and maintaining them. Do you really think you hindered the relationships with your guidelines they somehow couldn't understand (what's so hard to understand about “no plastic, batteries or tv characters?”). Maybe part of this is doing a better job of showing them just how much joy their appropriate (by our standards) gifts are bringing the kids
(b) I also agree that we can't be absolute, and also that our ability or even appropriateness to control it all will continue to diminish as they get older. But for now with young children, I still feel it is my job and responsibility to maintain a safe, nurturing environment for them and for us as a family.
February 3rd, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Hey Rick! (and Sarah, and boys whose names I don't know if you divulge on the 'net, so I won't either!!)
I almost feel really guilty ganging up on you like this, as erica and I have discussed this issue to death, but you're a big boy, and I know how you loves a good debate, so here goes!!
It does, in fact seem that some people (cough*grandparents*cough) are, for whatever reason, unable to understand “no plastic, no batteries, no light-up noisy toys”, and feel pretty strongly that the latest toy is a joy of childhood…no, no, an inalienable right of childhood, and we are nuts to not want our kids to have them. My kids have lots of grandparents, and one of them, who we recently lost to cancer, silently made it clear that these were HER fricken' grandkids, and she would buy them whatever they most wanted in life, each and every time she saw them, and then some… did I love that at the time? no, it really bugged me, and I ranted and raved to some of the other grandparents about it. THOSE grandparents nodded along with me, but really didn't get where I was coming from, and now either send cash or nothing at all, and I DO actually think their relationship with my kids suffered from me being anal about what does and does not come into our home. I would happily put up with spiderman and barbie arriving in the mail from a loving grandparent who was really reaching for ways to connect with her long distance grandkids, and doing so in the only way she really knew how. Maybe the folks in your life are more willing to bend to your will, to take your suggestions, and maybe you're better at giving suggestions for ways to connect, but I, like erica, have seen my family just sort of shrug their shoulders and give up, and I regret ever saying anything at all about what gifts we would and would not like to have. I've also come to see that while *I* love certain toys and games, etc, my kids do sometimes have other ideas, and that objects only have as much power as we give them. In my ideal world, there would be no Mr. Big Blocks (and yes, I would have stashed it away after a few days too) but I also see that a few days with Mr. Big Blocks (or the X-men, or Barbie, or Grand Theft Auto IV for that matter) really doesn't change who my kids are or what they do, as long as our relationship is solid, and trust and respect is an essential part of keeping that relationship solid, so I have to trust and respect them when they are certain that they LOVE and need to keep that plastic piece of junk that came in the mail from grandma. Having the gifty grandma pass away, I do actually see that these items, that would otherwise go unnoticed, are actually special to the kids, because they came from grandma dodie and do actually hold her memory for them.
so that's enough soapboxing from me for one day! I admire you for being able and willing to have these conversations with your family, but just wanted to throw out there that it can backfire with certain family dynamics, and if I had it to do over again, I'd just thank them profusely and pass it along when my kids lost interest.
hope you guys are really, really, really well, and thanks for posting such a thought provoking article!! Our planet will be better off for it! : )
February 4th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
Te he, Tiffani, I find you rising to my defense yet again!!! Good to see you here – having the same discussion we've been having for years!
Rick, I've been mulling over your reply for a couple of days, and here's more of my thoughts….
a) thank you for the piano, the kids DID love it and really appreciate that you remembered and thought enough to send it! They've been having a lot of fun playing it outside (and have even mastered a bit of Mozart!) – Since we all only have one cupboard each in the rv, they'll have to figure out if they love it enough to part with other toys to make room, or pass it along to the goodwill for another family to enjoy. Nonetheless, we all appreciate your thoughtfulness!!!! (of course, Jamie and I secretly curse you the noisy thing, and hope the batteries will run out soon or the kids move onto something else, but that's besides the point!!!)
b) OF COURSE *I* don't think relationships should be based on the process of gift giving/rejecting. However, I'm not always surrounded by people who feel the same way, and so yes I HAVE observed relationships become strained and resentful and negative when I try to impose too much of my desire and will on it.
c) Another issue I personally have struggled with, is if I'm advocating that everyone pay attention to my wishes and desires re: how I want to live my life and the gifts I want to receive, should I then do the same in return? Because my mil LOVES the dollar store and Walmart, and would MUCH prefer a gift from there over the homemade scrapbook I made her last year.
d) Ultimately I agree with you, I'd sooooooo rather my children be surrounded by ethical toys, very few of them, I would love my house to be simple, organic and full of beautiful things. I just disagree with the approach of telling the gift giver (unless you have a good enough relationship that that would be a helpful route to go – I tend to go the route of thank you, and think of it as unintentional charity on their part as I pass it on to goodwill when my kids also aren't in love with it) and I also have children who have different esthetics of beautiful and necessary than me!!!!!!
e) Perhaps it's more passive, but increasingly I'm coming to peace with the path of living my own life and hopefully showing by example. (that includes with my children) I choose to give thoughtful gifts that are homemade or through SEVA/HEIFER. I blog about our adventures trying to live a greener, more intentional life. I share videos like “The Story of Stuff”, and make choices like join the car coop over buying a car when in the city. People who care about what I'd like as a gift notice that and have started giving really thoughtful appropriate gifts. Those who don't notice or strongly disagree, wouldn't be swayed by me telling them they're not allowed anyways. That's been my experience so far…..perhaps next year I'll be at a different place in this journey, this is just such a complicated issue for me! Obviously, as I keep writing so much about it!
Cheers, Erica
May 6th, 2009 at 8:06 am
Great Post!