agonyaunt | (no subject)

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My husband’s brother and his wife have three children. For nearly 14 years, we’ve given their kids generous gifts for birthdays and at Christmas. It was our pleasure to do so — until six years ago, when we had a son, and my sister-in-law started buying him junk gifts that cost a fraction of what we spend on their children. Their most recent gift to our son (a flimsy superhero coloring book for his sixth birthday) was so lousy that he started crying when he unwrapped it. The imbalance makes me angry, on his behalf and on mine. What can I do?

MOM

Oh, boy! You and I see this problem very differently. I get that as a parent, you feel protective of your son. (I wouldn’t change that for the world.) But you are wrong to think of gift giving as a price-matching exercise. It’s not! Gifts are merely tokens of affection.

The most disturbing part of your letter, to me, is that your son burst into tears at receiving a “lousy” gift. I think you and your husband have some work to do in teaching him about gratitude. He may be a child, but 6 is not too young to begin to understand that all gifts are cause for thanks — even if we dislike them. If I were you, I’d get on this issue ASAP.

Now, as for the price differential between the families’ gifts, I see two options: Continue giving, as before, but spend less if it makes you feel better. Or tell your in-laws, without a hint of criticism, that you’d like to stop exchanging gifts. There’s no need to give a reason, and busy parents will likely be happy to oblige.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/14/style/birthday-gifts-social-qs.html

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1. Gonna point out, once again, it's the woman who gets the blame while the man gets off scot-free. Does BIL have no responsibility in picking out gifts for his young nephew?

2. Six year olds do not know what things cost. They do not know the relative value of items, nor the value of money. This child is not keeping a running price tally of everything Aunt Theodosia spends on his gifts. They do, however, have a weird tendency to burst into tears at the drop of a hat. You should refrain from projecting your own assumptions on why they're crying at a birthday on them.

3. It is entirely possible that this couple is sending cheap gifts because they just don't value this relationship. However, since LW didn't mention any other signs that these people just dislike her, her husband, and her son, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that they just think that a coloring book is a perfectly reasonable gift for a six year old child, and would be both shocked and hurt to hear their gift described as "junk".

4. Also, relative income etc.

5. Since LW and Husband are clearly not going to talk to these people in a calm and rational way, they need to either a. tone down the gift giving or b. let it go. (Or, if this really *is* a sign that these people don't like them and their son, limit contact and consider no longer exchanging gifts with them at all.)

seconding all of this

Word. (Also, LW doesn't mention the different households' respective incomes.)

ALL OF THIS.

Also. 3 kids worth of things to buy vs 1 kids worth of things to buy for every day will effect the relative income as well. Buying groceries and clothes for 3 kids leaves less $$ to buy presents overall.

And, not that I'd say it to LW's face, but except in some very particular situations it's a bit crass to buy gifts that your recipient really couldn't afford to buy for you.

I can see that. I mean I don't have kids and my sisters expect me to buy bigger gifts for theirs bc of this. But. 2 things: a) I only buy clothes and books. So sometimes I will ask "what does Kid need?" and they tend to get the thing sister cannot buy right now. and b) as my sisters have gone from having 2 kids a piece to having MANY MORE (there are now 8 kids between 2 sisters) I lowered the amount I spend bc I have to spread it among 8 instead of 4. The kids? Still pleased to get things. Altho as they get older the excitement ears off knowing I only give clothes and books.

2. Six year olds do not know what things cost. They do not know the relative value of items, nor the value of money. This child is not keeping a running price tally of everything Aunt Theodosia spends on his gifts. They do, however, have a weird tendency to burst into tears at the drop of a hat. You should refrain from projecting your own assumptions on why they're crying at a birthday on them.

Agreed, and also, if LW's son was indeed crying because he expected a better gift, it's because LW gave him that expectation.

Oh yeah. Which is just wrong of the parents to do - after six years, they know what sort of gifts the inlaws will send and they need to manage their child's expectations about them.

(And, in general, encourage children to practice gratitude and remember it's the thought that counts. It does happen sometimes that people send spite gifts, and make it painfully clear that they resent even the bare minimum, or worse. I'm reasonably certain that this isn't an example, but if it is, the gift giving is a symptom of the real problem, and the solution is not going to be "those people need to give better gifts" but "we need to cut out exchanging gifts entirely and limit contact".)

True, 100%, if he was crying because better. Or he might even have just been crying because different -- he is six, after all.

When I was 5 or so I cried because I thought I was getting a doctor costume as a gift from my grandmother and it was a nurse costume. I wasn't crying because proto-feminism or anything--I don't recall having any expectations about what a doctor was vs. a nurse, or that one was better than the other. I cried because I had an expectation that existed in my tiny head, and I was surprised when it was disrupted, like biting into a cookie thinking it's chocolate chip and getting a raisin instead. (Or vice versa. I like both.)

A coloring book is a great toy when you're six. That doesn't mean it's what the kid wanted. Maybe he wanted a Playstation and LW led him to believe he'd be getting one -- or maybe he wanted a coloring book about Batgirl and he got one about Thor. Who knows? It sure as hell wasn't about money, though.

Edited (trying to clarify I'm not disagreeing with shirou, just adding another possibility) 2022-04-19 00:07 (UTC)

Wow, I do not even know how to respond to this false equivalency of chocolate and raisins. Really, raisins? :p

Otherwise, yeah, I agree. I didn't put much thought into my choice of the word "better." My point was that any expectations held by LW's son were likely planted by LW.

Edited 2022-04-19 00:38 (UTC)

*cracks up laughing*
*makes culinary note: no raisins for Shirou*
(FWIW Alton Brown feels the same way)

WORD

And even if they have the same income coming in,

they may have higher health care costs/health insurance costs

higher student loan costs

higher mortgage/rent costs

or be donating more money to charity

or spending more money supporting extended family members...

Agree with all this except a fine-tune on #2: six-year-olds may not know what things cost, but they absolutely do know the difference between "thing that everyone I know has" and "thing that not every kid has". (Or at least, one of my children was very aware of this as a six-year-old.) So if the kid sees that his parents are buying his cousins Really Cool Gifts, and his uncle and aunt are sending him something Ordinary, the kid might pick up on that. But even then, it's on the parents to manage expectations and to instill the idea that when someone gives you a gift, you express appreciation even if it's not what you wanted. (How to deal with passive-aggressive gifts is something you teach much older kids, not six-year-olds.)

(How to deal with passive-aggressive gifts is something you teach much older kids, not six-year-olds.)

Agreed. If that's the actual problem then your job when they're that age is to protect them from it entirely, which probably means agreeing to no longer exchange gifts with these people.

What kid doesn’t love a coloring book? The only thing I can think of is kid is 100% into Spider-Man, and only Spider-Man, this week, and the book was Aquaman. Or Mom noticeably sniffed, “Auntie must not care about you, to send that terrible present.”

My kids didn't. One didn't enjoy using crayons/markers/etc. in general; the other would've been much happier with a blank sketchbook so they could make their own drawings. Nonetheless, if that was the present they received, we'd have expected them to thank the giver cheerfully.

And thinking about it, we have no idea whether the "generous gifts" LW & spouse gave their niblings were chosen because they were what the niblings were into or because they were status gifts. For all we know, the niblings may have hated the presents, or played with them once or twice and then abandoned them; maybe BIL and SIL said to each other "sheesh, we ended up with so much junk that the kids didn't play with; let's give nephew a present that'll get used up."

Yeah. As an only child of popular people, I was given some large presents as a child (including a piano and a telescope) that I felt guilty about because I didn't want them/couldn't use them (Neil DeGrasse Tyson had the fortitude to figure out how to use a telescope in the middle of NYC's light pollutio, but I did not). Once I was given a gaming rig of some kind that I had no interest in, and fortunately-ish my parents either regifted or sold it immediately. I mean, I thanked people because politeness, but this was how I felt in my little heart.

A piano!?

It was an upright piano, but/and yes, my parents got some of their friends to help them buy me a piano I did not want, and then inflicted piano lessons on me for three years.

ANd I feel ungrateful even typing that.

To be fair, the gift of a piano is the antigift of "make this piano someone else's problem".

The gifters probably would have been better off donating it to your church for a nice tax deduction.

Oh, I can think of some kids who wouldn't love coloring books, or who might not even *like* them very much. (Or who might not like the theme of this one.)

Which doesn't make a coloring book a bad gift for a six year old you're not necessarily very close to, though I do advise people to ask parents for suggestions if they don't know what to get. (It's weird to me how many people will ask "What to get for a 6/9/12 year old???" to the general public rather than just asking the parents directly.)

Yes! I can maybe see asking the internet what to get when it's a kid whose parents you aren't close to (I've never met the parents of many of my kids' classmates, and if it's an at-school friend, I may never have met the kid either), but if you know the parents well, then you should be able to ask "hey, what's kid into lately?/would kid like such-and-such item?"

Or, "I can't believe she keeps giving you garbage"

I think item #1 on LW's agenda has to be teaching the kid to write thank-you notes. As many people have pointed out, we don't know why LW's kid started crying – but 6 is old enough to be taught to smile and say "How thoughtful!" even if he doesn't feel happy about the gift he's unwrapping. It doesn't seem like the kid is getting a good (age-appropriate) education in manners.

True, and the LW could use some remedial mannners training to enable them to be able to teach their kid. Maybe they could learn together. :)

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