My husband and I have been long time opponents of birthday parties and Christmas mornings that involve more presents than a kid can comprehend. I have seen more children surrounded by bags and piles of beautifully wrapped presents, excited to begin opening the loot that lies before them. They open the first one and start to play with it, only to have it snatched from their hands and another gift handed to them. Mildly confused they comply and start to open the second gift. Again, excitedly they start to play with it, only to have the same scenario repeated, over and over again. By the time they are done opening the 20, 30, 40 gifts they have received their eyes that once shone bright with joy and amazement are glazed over and they have tuned out whatever joy they had started to experience and they have replaced it with the sense of entitlement and the question "What else do I get?"
Consider my family, we have 2 kids, and the original parents (me and my husband), there are 2 sets of grandparents, 3 aunts, 4 uncles, 10 cousins, neighbors, day care workers, school teachers, church friends, and school friends who are all possible sources for gifts. There have been years when Christmas involved multiple gifts from multiple people (including all of the above plus 2 great aunts). The gifts that my husband and I so thoughtfully picked out just got lost in the shuffle. Our kids had so many toys they didn't have room for them. They had so many clothes they couldn't fit them all in their dressers or closets. I was sad when I heard "What else do I get?" I wanted to scream "Aren't the 100 brand new items you just received enough?" Of course I knew that the real truth was that they were too much.
Thus began the campaign my husband and I launched about 3 years ago to ask for no more big trash bags (lawn & leaf size) stuffed to the brim with dollar store items brought over for Christmas. We asked relatives to please limit the number of toys, and please try to focus on clothes or some item of intellectual value like a book, game, or craft. It finally paid off.
For my daughter's birthday she got a reasonable amount of clothing and toys.
It apparently made an impact on her too.
We say bedtime prayers and I asked her to say the prayer last night. It went something like "Dear God, thank you for a great weekend. Thank you for a nice birthday. Thank you that people didn't overload me with toys. Thank you that I got stuff besides toys. Thank you God. Amen."
Yay!
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2 comments:
I could NOT agree with you more. Perhaps I'll establish an "activities only" policy for Zachary's gifts in the future. Spend time not money! :-)
Good job mom! That's kinda what we did last year and they still got plenty. One thing my daughter does is rotate the toys so they don't get too tired of them. Also, she puts their favorite toy in 'toy jail' if they are fighting, or not sharing, or just have attitude issues. It's amazing how motivating a toy can be in toy jail.
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