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I've never been in this position before. I am sitting here with my kid's wishlists. My son's (who is 10) is almost all books and a couple lego kits. My daughter's (age 8) is all toys.
I added it up, my son's entire list is about $250 (less then I was going to spend)
My daughter's was $700 (eek! No way).
If I buy all the items on my son's list (almost 20) for $250, and I spend the same amount on my daughter, she will get like 4 toys (If I pick her top wants)
I don't care how many ways I try to explain to my daughter why brother got 20 gifts and she got 4, she will absolutely not be ok about it. I don't blame her. She really doesn't have the capability yet to understand. But it feels "wrong" to spend more on one then the other...even if they didn't seem to notice.
Ugh...I think I hate Christmas. She already has a ton of toys. And she barely plays with them. She spends almost all her play time building a tiny city out of cardboard boxes and making furniture and items for it out of paper and random things she finds.
I would get your daughters top three or four requests and then do a numbers game with smaller gifts like hair bows and barrettes, bubble bath, fun socks, clothes, fancy pens, papers, anything blingy or other traditional girly wants. Girls tend to have more things than boys anyway. I would just use this as an opportunity to buy things you would buy her anyway.
You can also bundle a couple of your son's presents together so it doesn't look like he is getting as many.
No one says you have to pick the top 4 things off your daughter's list. I figure, anything that's on the list at all is fair game. If you drop down to the lower-ranked items, can you raise the overall quantity without exceeding your price threshold?
When the kids were younger I would always get the same number of gifts. I agree that you should get your daughter a number of small gifts and wrap them.
Fair?
OK, give them each 5 $20 bills in five separate cards.
They each have the same number of cards, with the same amount of money.
If the boy spends his on 10 different items and has change left, but the girl spends hers on 5 different items and has no money left, that will be a lesson that is worth a lot in and of itself!
Decisions have consequences!
Just don't do it like my MIL, who bought useless, crappy $5 items to even out the dollar discrepancy between DILs.
You're probably the only one who knows the amounts. Think about it from their POVs.
Part of growing up is having your Christmas shrink a little bit each year. Sometimes that means having fewer gifts to open. That's when we began having them buy a present from them to their siblings. That made Christmas morning even more fun, as they really looked forward to seeing their sibling's reactions, and it took the emphasis off of "I want, I want..."
I tell my kids they each have a hundred dollars to spend. They take some time deciding what they want...at one point my younger daughter's Amazon wish list was up to about $500. By the time I'm ready to buy Christmas gifts, they've figured out what they want the most.
I usually spend some more on things I've chosen for them as surprises. I used to worry about them having the same number of presents, but they're so interested in different things that it's hard to make the presents balance numerically...$50 worth of sketchbooks doesn't look equal to $50 worth of dollhouse miniatures.
Since your daughter likes making things out of paper, pads of scrapbook paper and fancy paper punches would be a good gift. So would some quilling supplies...a quilling needle, strips of paper, and a how-to book. And a low-temp glue gun, some popsicle sticks in different sizes, craft supplies like that. One of my kids loves making things out of cardboard, scraps of fabric, paper, pretty much anything she can find can be turned into things for her doll houses.
I've never been in this position before. I am sitting here with my kid's wishlists. My son's (who is 10) is almost all books and a couple lego kits. My daughter's (age 8) is all toys.
I added it up, my son's entire list is about $250 (less then I was going to spend)
My daughter's was $700 (eek! No way).
If I buy all the items on my son's list (almost 20) for $250, and I spend the same amount on my daughter, she will get like 4 toys (If I pick her top wants)
I don't care how many ways I try to explain to my daughter why brother got 20 gifts and she got 4, she will absolutely not be ok about it. I don't blame her. She really doesn't have the capability yet to understand. But it feels "wrong" to spend more on one then the other...even if they didn't seem to notice.
Ugh, what I pain! I am not sure what to do.
It's ALL in the packing. Just make sure they have 4 presents EACH to open
Pack your son's books up into a couple of boxes as ONE present (daughter prolly won't care about books if she doesn't care for them), wrap his two lego sets up separately, and you have 4 boxes.
Buy your daughter her top 4 priority items and wrap them separately into 4 boxes. Done
(either that or get some small stuff , separate them into two boxes, put two large items into two packages, and you have 4 boxes)
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