Pricey presents
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- June
- 5
When you have children, it seems like you’re always buying birthday presents.
In our family, I’m the buyer of birthday gifts. It fell to me and not my husband, because, well, I like shopping a little more than he does.
Lately, it seems that the cost of these presents has risen quite a bit. I recall when my 13-year-old was a preschooler, I could easily buy a nice kid’s present for $15 or less. As my kids got older, the stakes were raised a little bit, and the norm for a present was about $20 to $25. I could live with that.
But then one year, when my son was about 10, someone bought him a PlayStation game. A PlayStation game?! They run about $40 to 50! That seemed awfully extravagant to me, especially coming from one kid to another. So now, I’m trying to hold down the spending to no more than $30, but then my sons remind me that “Johnny” bought them Madden 2007, so we HAVE to get him a new video game, too.
I’m not in agreement with that. I don’t want to get into any tit-for-tat present-giving; I want them to give gifts because they think that’s what the person would like, not because the value matches the gift they received. But with the way some parents are spending, it’s becoming difficult to keep that lesson in check.
Are you finding the same thing? And how do you deal with it?
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, June 5th, 2007 at 5:20 pm by Gayle T. Williams.
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Gayle, two words: GIFT CARD.
But here’s my dilemma with that, CR: How much???
It really doesn’t matter. If you only spend $15 or $20, the kid will love the gift either way. If the parent doesn’t invite your kid next year because you spent less on a gift than s/he did, who really cares, and is that the kind of lesson you want to teach your kid?
It doesn’t have to be tit-for-tat. It’s what you can afford and what you want to do.
You are so right, CR. This is why you are definitely one of my “mommy mentors.”