Stand back! Auntie's got some overthinking to do.

[mrissa]

As many of you know, I'm an only child; when I refer to my brother, I'm talking about the one I went out and got for myself in my late teens, not one who was parentally provided. And he is a very fine brother and all one could ask for in a brother...and does not affect my only child brain processes in the slightest. He is very much loved, but as for how my brain works by default, it's all in only child mode.

This got to be a problem this Christmas, because I have several sets of small child siblings to buy for. Very small child siblings. I am, I flatter myself, good at buying presents for little kids. I know about various picture books with dinosaurs and pirates and knufflebunnies; I keep track of where to buy toys that come with spaceships and toys that roll into little magnetic balls and toys that build a million different things that aren't pictured on the box. I even found some soap in the shape of Hello Kitty this year for a little extra, making me officially awesome in the eyes of my Hello Kitty-obsessed goddaughter.

But when the gifts are going to siblings, it's not the same as buying for a kid and then buying for another kid. I have learned--oh how I have learned. There are times when it's okay to buy one kid books and the other toys, for example, and times when it is not. (Buying the older, more mature kid who freely and joyfully admits to reading on his own a toy, and then his younger, supposedly pre-literate sister books? Not so much.) And then there are all the things it's awesome to buy for an 18-month-old...that you already bought for an 18-month-old last time they had an 18-month-old, and you have no reason to think they've thrown the thing in the garbage since. So then you have to come up with something else. That won't be too redundant. And it can't be something somewhat too old for the littler kid that they can grow into, because if you do that, you've de facto given the older sibling two presents and the littler one zero. If it's too directly age-appropriate, they'll grow out of it in five seconds flat; if it's not limitedly age-appropriate enough, you risk the older, bigger kid sidling up and taking it over.

("I don't think that's a big problem," said markgritter, himself an oldest. Hah. I watched it happen.)

And if you have opposite-sex siblings to give gifts to, and you look and say, "Well, what don't they have around the house already?", the answer is often highly gendered. And you really don't want the message to be, "Big sib is the oldest, so they get the cool stuff: the telescopes, the building toys, the best books. And you get the really gendery Girl/Boy stuff, which frankly kind of sucks." Even if they will not, before they are out of preschool, see the suckage--that's kind of the point. They won't. But I will.

This will all be so much easier in just a few years, when the younger siblings in question can say, "Auntie Mris, I want a--", or their parents can say, "You know, he/she is really into--" and then I can go off and get that sort of thing, or something tangentially related to it. Four-year-olds--contrary to our culture's common beliefs--have opinions and interests. Eighteen-month-olds do, too, they're just not as good at expressing them in advance. Moral of the story is not to get too attached to them adoring any given present, I guess; I have that one down for all the kids. I just...I think it comes down to not being comfortable with intrafamily conflict over presents. It alarms me. Probably if I'd given some other kid a good whack to make them let me have my Ewok Village back, I'd feel more comfortable about this, but I didn't, so I don't.

Comments

[guppiecat]

I agree with Mark.

However, since I see your point as well, I would like to mention that toys like LEGO, DUPLO, Lincoln Logs and the such are toys that can be combined to great effect. They encourage creative and cooperative play.

Best of all, if a kid is too young to really appreciate these sorts of toys, they're not going to remember the age appropriate toy that they grow out of tomorrow, so you can dote on the more enjoyable elder child.

[guppiecat]

Oh, and if you've not yet given out this book, you have a lot of backfill to do.

[buttonlass.livejournal.com]

Josh is very right. We love this book for our littles.:)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The better question is: why has nobody given me this book?

It's because you all don't love me enough, isn't it?

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

Oh my word. You have just solved one of my shopping problems. Thank you!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

See, "dote on the more enjoyable elder child" is exactly the pattern I have seen go very, very sour in some families, and I want to avoid it.

[guppiecat]

Does it go sour when the younger child is still in the pre-DUPLO stage? While I've observed it myself, I have not seen it until the younger kid gets old enough to both care and remember.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Tangential to your actual point, I gave the book with Knufflebunny in it to someone when they were the right age for it, because I read it standing in Borders and loved it to pieces. Which is the great thing about having someone picture-book age to buy gifts for.

[finnyb.livejournal.com]

I love the first two Knufflebunny books (so much that I bought the plushie bunny to go with them). The third one, not so much. (I'm twenty-nine.)

[cathshaffer.livejournal.com]

You're lucky to get an 18 month old to actually open presents. And if they open one, generally they are not interested in opening another one. So, you know, it's all good. :-)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Rip tear maim destroy! This is a small child's raison d'etre!

[cathshaffer.livejournal.com]

Of course, but only when it's inconvenient for the parents. On the one day that you want them to be destructive, you will suddenly have a child who is tired, cranky, bored, distracted, or wants to play with that very first new toy. LOL.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It worked very well with the elder niecelet, when she was at a Christmas celebration with presents from grandparents, multiple uncles, aunt, etc., to let her open one and play with it until she was ready to do something else. This works best if your family Christmas is, as ours is, a multi-day affair, so that if she is enthralled with her new markers from early afternoon to nap-time and then wakes up and wants to play with something she already has until dinner, you haven't just squandered the entire opportunity for Grandma to see her open her present, but you also haven't been forced to tear her away from the thing she likes in order to force her to BE HAPPY DAMMIT over something else.

[cathshaffer.livejournal.com]

We've not had much luck getting people under the age of two to participate in holiday gift opening in our family. Generally, it would take days for all of them to be opened. Luckily, all the people over the age of two were okay with that.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

My second Christmas, I had a week-old brother and a mother in the hospital. Opening the presents took a week.

[buttonlass.livejournal.com]

I must say what I remember about being a sibling with a sister 18 months younger than me was how many we got. We were very particular about even amounts of everything. Our parents ended up getting us each one of whatever it was appropriate or not.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have witnessed this behavior in siblings close to me. It is one of the ways in which siblings are baffling.

"each one of whatever"

[careswen.livejournal.com]

My parents often employed this trick with myself and my brother (+2 years). For example, each Christmas, we would each get a Walkman. At some point in the year, brother would destroy or lose his Walkman and take mine. That would also be soon destroyed or lost. Next year, we each got a new Walkman. Lather, rinse, repeat.

As a therapist, looking back on this, I understand much better now why my brother was never good at understanding or accepting consequences for his actions.

Ahh, siblings.

Re: "each one of whatever"

[mightyjesse.livejournal.com]

Weird. Your parents didn't color code your identical things or anything?

Our parents always got us the same stuff, but it was all color coded so that we could tell whose was whose, and if you broke yours you couldn't get away with taking someone else's.

We also, often, got gifts that went well together, so that we would collaborate. Because everyone knows that you can build even BIGGER Lego things with 4 boxes of Legos than you can with one... Or Lincoln Logs, or whatever.

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

I have a dreadful time buying for my boyfriends. See, there are four of them, all thoughtfully birthed by my friend Jen (who I named Cupcake after) and I buy them books. However, by the time you hit boy #4 in the same family? You've bought most of the good books. Mo Willems Pigeon books? Done. If you give a blank a blank? Most of them, and you can really only do so many.

This year I'm scrambling- but guppiecat may have solved the baby.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

How Do Dinosaurs Something Something Something. Yes. The field of truly outstanding picture books is--well, not as limited as I think, probably, but finding them to look through and verify is another matter.

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

And I've found recently that there are things I want to like that turn out quite disappointing. There's a series called "Llama Llama" and while re love llama around here and the rhymes are cute it seems like they're all about him pitching horrible tantrums. Not really a theme I want to introduce. My son did not throw huge public tantrums and I'd rather not ever give Cupcake the idea that such a thing is possible. (Yes, she may come up with it on her own- I'm just not planting the idea.)

[p-j-cleary.livejournal.com]

When I had all nieces (after the nieces and nephew that are older got past the age of being hard to buy for, because they could ask for stuff), I bought nothing but princess dresses for all!

Now I have exactly one nephew in the mix of All Nieces, and so Christmas this year is, Princess Dress, Princess Dress, Princess Dress, Princess Dress, Princess Dress, Princess Dress, Truck.

Though heteronormative standards aren't always the most liberal thing to encourage, I don't really want to buy the nephew a princess dress...until he asks for one.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, there are some things I'm interested in pushing the envelope on there and some things I'm not. The nieces are getting fairy wings, among other things, and while I would buy dress-up stuff, including fantasy dress-up stuff, if they had been nephews instead, I think I'd have waited for a specific request on the fairy wings also. (I almost bought them an awesome knight dress-up kit. It had a cloak. Everybody likes cloaks. They swirl. You do not have to be a particular sex or age to like cloaks.)

I saw the picture of all the princess dresses on your lj, and they are big enough that one hopes that if Niece X had expressed a dislike for such things, she could have a truck also, or some Lego--this falls into the category of "big enough to express opinions" for sure.

[dancing-crow.livejournal.com]

One strange year when the big kid was micro and pre-verbal someone gave her a bag of mixed cat toys. She was ecstatic - there kept being one more to pull out of the bag, and they could be chewed, rolled, tossed, and lost without hazard. As a bonus, they didn't take up too much space in our tiny house, and could be thrown out with a clean conscience when they became filthy. They could be shared with the (fascinating) larger children present, without having said larger individuals lust after them. They were a nearly perfect present - instantly usable, age appropriate, shareable and (my favorite) an invitation to play.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hee. Awesome.

Of the three sets of small-child siblings I buy for, two have at least one cat in the house, and two have a dog in the house, so the confusion of "this pet toy smelling/shaped thing belongs to the little monkey and not to me?" on the part of the animal might be a little hard to navigate. (Or did you have that circumstance and no problem with it?) But for those whose circumstances are not like that, perfect.

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

We have a cat and a dog and while the cat is largely uninterested, the dog is constantly after the baby's toys. We've lost two binkies and an nice teether already. I'm not sure we'd fare any worse with pet toys around here. Of course, some people's pets might be better behaved than mine.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We have worked with Ista on the idea that not all plushies are for her to chew. This is paying off, as she has not gone after Girlish Girlish Kitty, who is Lillian's bestest companion ever. (Named by Lillian herself! Who'd have thought!) Sometimes Ista looks covetous and mournful, but this is much better than when she was a pup and thought that plushies were All For Ista! All For Ista!

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

How, I ask, did you get so much smarter about this kid stuff than many parents are?

Four-year-olds--contrary to our culture's common beliefs--have opinions and interests. Eighteen-month-olds do, too, they're just not as good at expressing them in advance.

I think that most parents are aware of this, but a lot of them think it's a bad thing for kids (sometimes even adult ones) to have opinions [that differ from their parents'] and interests [that the parents do not vet and approve]. Ugh.

At this point I have four nieces that I buy gifts for. One is in her late teens, and she gets makeup sets or jewelry I make or something else that my similarly-aged daughter would like. The other three are under ten; they are my grand-niece and her two sisters in her adoptive family. (Our family tree looks more like a tangle of vines.) I confess that I fall back on gift cards; they live far away, I never get the chance to interact with them, and this way they can pick something they actually want. Their mom says they really like having something they can "spend" on their own choice.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, I remember my childhood a lot better than a lot of people do. My first memory that can be independently verified as a memory is when I was 15 months old, and I have very strong recollections of conversations with my folks when I was 3 or 4 years old in which I was...very clearly me, I guess. Personality continuity is very clear for me.

Also I had a bunch of little cousins who were very clearly not the same person pretty early on. And also I didn't start with the assumption that children are not really people. So that helps.

But as for interests--I think that you're right that they are supposed to be parentally vetted. But I also think they are sort of ranked as lesser, as not really counting. If your 5-year-old is really into horses or drawing or soccer, that's cute, but you don't have to take it seriously, it's not like a real person had an interest in those things. And I hate that.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I don't remember as far back as you do, but I have a strong sense of my personality continuity, too.

I think that treating our kids as people, as individual people, has always been at the core of our parenting.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what I'd get kids, if I had them to buy for. http://www.amazon.com/Give-Dog-Bone-Steven-Kellogg/dp/1587170019 is my favorite preschool book in the world right now, mostly because of the raptors. The Nerdy Baby stuff, that has to happen. Trains, because every preschooler I have worked with likes trains. Fold-up cardboard blocks and possibly help assembling them, because they are like a miracle toy for anyone able to stack them and knock it down. The rest will have to wait until I have specific children to buy for rather than hypothetical ones.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

This, as everything you write, is really fascinating. And not something I've ever thought of (being an only) or ever had to think of later (not having little kids in the family circle of buying gifts for).

A four-year-old has her own preferences, but all the ones I married into I don't know well enough to know whether they like princesses, trucks, calculators or mouse balls, being as they live in Philadelphia and neither me nor my husband has ever met them let alone spent significant time with them. I guess that's why we don't send them gifts -- their parents, who are all JD's cousins, don't send us gifts either. But I think I would probably have to fall back on asking the parents what the kid was into.

PS about those mouse balls

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

I mean the thing you put your pet mouse into and have it run around the house ... :D Realised that could use some clarification.

[seagrit.livejournal.com]

You know, I'm completely with you on this. I've had almost all of those thoughts about the girls presents at some point this month. What can I get Lily that Amber will not automatically usurp? What can I get Lily that we don't already have from two years ago? What can I get Amber that Lily won't rip to shreds or choke on? Can I justify to myself getting fewer presents for the baby, because she can't tell the difference anyway?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, my concern with buying for families with more than one kid is not that getting fewer/smaller/etc. presents for the littler one will be a problem for the littler one right away, because you can tell whether the littler one is big enough to know the difference pretty well. It's whether a) it's setting a precedent and b) the older one is old enough to know the difference. And if so, whether the older one is old enough to have the difference explained to them in a way that makes sense and doesn't come out as preference. Because I think it can be just as damaging for kids to go around thinking that they are Auntie's Favorite as that their sibling is. This is less likely to be a problem with parents because parents are around all the time--if the kid starts showing signs of thinking "Mommy and Daddy love me better than you," the parents can nip that in the bud much more easily than an aunt or godmother who isn't around as much.

I know a couple of people who grew up knowing that they were Grandma or Grandpa's favorite, and it was Really Not Good for them. I mean, it was unpleasant for their siblings/cousins also, but it turned out to be much worse for the kid who thought of themselves as the little king or queen.

[mightyjesse.livejournal.com]

This Christmas and next, I think Emily will be getting "the box that the toy came in."

Or maybe a calculator. She likes things with buttons. (She currently has two remote controls for obsolete AV equipment.) And while she has no human siblings, getting the dogs toys that the baby will not want and the baby toys that the dogs will not hide will be... tricky.

Right now, the baby wants the nylabone and the dogs want the freezy teether. I could get them each one of those things for their very own, but they would not want them. They only want what they do because the OTHER dog/bebe has it. So this Christmas, we are learning about SHARING and TAKING TURNS.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am pleased but not the least bit surprised that you, of all people, have a bebe and dogs who are learning about SHARING from each other.

[sageautumn.livejournal.com]

Kids under 2 or 2 and a half, I get them diapers. (Yes, it's a present for the parents... they get something to open, and they don't care.)

This MIGHT be different if the kids didn't have an extended network that would be getting them alllllkiiiinds of crap. ... ... Actucally, thinking about that, chances are it wouldn't be different because a parent in that situation would probably REALLY need diapers even more.