My daughter is coming up on her 6th birthday in a few months, so yesterday I asked her where she wants to have a party this year and who she wants to invite, since she's now in kinder and our friend list changed from the preK days. Out of nowhere, she tells me that she wants her friends to bring her presents this year. We've had birthday parties every year since she was 3 with her friends, and have always said no gifts on our invitations. It's pretty common for our area, so everyone generally respects this, and because my daughter is an only child and grandchild for both sides, she gets a ton of stuff from family, so we definitely want to keep up with the no gifts tradition. She's never been aware that we put this on the invites, but I'm guessing because she's been to a few parties recently where we did bring gifts, and we made her an active part of selecting them, she made the connection, hence the request. I tried to explain to her that in our family, we consider our friends celebrating with us a gift, and that's the most important thing, and all families do things differently, but it didn't click. Any advice on how to address this with her? Overall she's pretty good with gratitude and realizing how much privilege she has, but she is still a kid so we have work to do. I'm nervous about this coming up at the party itself so I'd like to deal with it beforehand.
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I’m not sure you can get a 6yo to not want presents. I would try to reach a compromise that you both like - for example she can go through and donate old toys to make room for new presents. Or she can have a friends party one year and then no party the next (family only). Or if she wants a friends party with presents then mom and dad only get her one small item etc. so I guess I think her wanting presents is fair and you wanting gratitude is also fair. Perhaps there’s a way to accomplish both.
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@gotkimchi: totally fair. Honestly my concern is that people will end up getting tons of stuff she won’t even use, so I’d rather just not have anyone get anything. And trying to help her understand that she will not be short of gifts. Which also feels icky but I know she won’t understand that as much yet so mostly just trying to find a creative way to get her to understand why we don’t ask friends to bring presents.
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I don't think there's a way to make her understand or appreciate no gifts at this age. I think it's something she will understand and be appreciative of much later in life, but at this point she has no concept of money, time, clutter, over stimulation, etc...even though kids are absolutely affected by it. I think the only thing you can do is just be blunt and tell her "it is what it is." Explaining in detail like you seem to have done is obviously caring and supportive of her feelings, but she just doesn't have the capability yet to understand. @gotkimchi made some good points above about maybe having her choose between friend gifts or family. But again, it won't change the fact that she just doesn't have the capability to understand.
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I agree with above ... there also seems to be a shift in elementary school toward gifts being the norm. Maybe they get more ideas about keeping up with peers? I like the compromise ideas from @gotkimchi:
I feel your pain because we have a 7yo party this weekend and I kind of dread the presents! She didn’t care at all about no gifts at 5yo party. Now she’s way more into gifts and sometimes it feels greedy to me (they get plenty!) but I do think for us it’s the wrong battle to fight and it’s more figuring out how to deal with it after.
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@Mrs. Carrot: Do you think you can just keep the guest list really small? We did gifts for my 5 yo party after No gifts before that. I think it's hard to teach them about thoughtfully giving gifts to friends, without getting them at a party too. But if you make it a small friends party you and she won't be overwhelmed with gifts. Honestly I think @gotkimchi: idea about donating old toys is the best way to keep her thinking about others.
I worry about this with my 5 yo a lot. She got upset when we donated a few boxes of mac and cheese to her school's food pantry drive, because she wanted to keep it. Not really the attitude I'm trying to instill.
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What if people bring gifts for her to donate? I used to work for a nonprofit that did home visitation for families with young kids, and for one of my daughter's parties (to be fair, she was younger! 3 actually) we had people bring diapers and books for kids in their programs. My DD went with me to deliver everything to the office and we talked a lot about the donation. (Like in your situation, she still got some gifts from family.)
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Granted my LO1 is only 4 yo, but we do no gifts but ask for a donation to a local animal shelter. So kids have fun picking out pet things and then we take her to the shelter to deliver the items and look at the animals. She is a major animal lover and loves the adventure. Maybe find something like that? Still tangible things and a rewarding trip.
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I think it depends on why you are opposed to the gifts. To me it is odd and a little unfair to turn a 6yo’s birthday into a teachable moment. And there is also a lesson in learning to receive gifts gracefully, and in learning to thank people for being considerate and generous.
But I am often overwhelmed by clutter, and I don’t like living with so much excess.
I was feeling overwhelmed by the toy infusion after the holidays, and then my son asked to buy yet another (small, trinkety) toy. I told him that if he picked out 20 toys to get rid of, I would pay him $1 per toy and he could spend his $20 at the toy store.
He spent $12 on two tiny toys and two small rocks. I got rid of two boxes of toys!
In your situation I would consider removing the “no gifts” stipulation if your child will (a) pick one old toy per guest and donate it to charity to make space for the new gifts and (b) agree ahead of time to cooperate on writing thank you notes.
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We’ve actually never done a no gifts party, even though we live in a very small space. And that’s for the same reason you mentioned. My daughter has spent the last year picking out gifts for her classmates parties, so she wouldn’t understand why now she would have a party and wouldn’t get gifts from her friends. Plus I realize last year, her friends at her age already have a mind of their own. We did not have a party last year at all, but I let my daughter invite four of her friends over just after school for a super casual play date and cake, and that time I did tell their parents no gifts, because it was so casual. It was not a real party. However, all of her friends had already picked out specific gifts for her, and they really wanted to bring them to the party, so of course all the kids showed up with a present anyway.
So we’ve tackle the problem of having an excess of gifts with a multipronged approach. We have cut down on the toys that we give our own kids all year long. Our Christmas the past years has also been extremely modest, and each kid only got two or three things. We don’t let our parents give a lot of gifts for holidays, if they insist, then we steer them towards an experience since we live close to NYC and they can buy them tickets to a show or a museum or whatever. And then we only have a big birthday party every other year. Our kids of been totally fine with that, and they totally understand the concept of every other year. To me a big birthday party is A party where you invite the entire class plus your non-school friends, you probably have it at a venue since we all live in small spaces here, you’re going to be providing a meal as well as cake and goodie bags, the works. So since we only do that every other year, I allow the kids to just bring whatever gifts. And then of course we don’t open gifts at parties in this region, so we just take the big pile of gifts home, and I will admit I sometimes peek ahead of time and if it’s a gift that we already have, instead of returning it and encouraging our kids to just buy more, I instead hang onto it in my gift closet and at some point in the future we use it for another birthday party. Normally I think regifting is tacky, but in this case it’s a toy that my kids very much like and enjoy and I know other kids will like, it’s just that we already have it. And sometimes we also pick gifts to just save for later like three or four months in the future to give to our kids when they’re bored with their toys. We do that a lot with games or puzzles, because they do love those but they like to only work on a few at a time.
And finally when other parents ask what my kids want, and that has happened to surprising amount of times, I always say art supplies. Because my girls both love art and art supplies run out so quickly in our house. They dry out or break, so art supplies is like a cheap usable product that doesn’t stay on our house forever. Stay back
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A no gift thing is not really a thing where we live so it hasn’t come up but I truly understand the hate of clutter esp after a party. One thing I did to avoid that is, I had her unwrap all the presents at her party. (She’s six) and then she got to pick one toy to take apart. I told her she could open up a new toy only when she’s truly done playing with the opened toy (like if it’s a lego set....she has to finish making it or if it’s a craft kit, she has to use it, or if it’s a toy she has to play with it for a week) but she got to pick which toy to open every week and took time to really use it. During that time, I also went through her old toys and asked if there were any she has outgrown with or doesn’t play with for donation. Bonus point was I could also see her toys and get a jump ahead of the clutter. Like she was gifted with these cool scentable markers and I found an old mason jar to add to her art caddy to put it in. Or we also received this bead set with like 3 million pieces and I was imagining it all over the floor and getting eaten by her now crawling 10 month old sister so I ran to a craft store and bought her a bead storage box.
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Didn’t read the responses, but I’d just tell her in your family physical gifts come from parents and grandparents! I wouldn’t worry too much yet about the moral reasons clicking - just remind her she gets some, just not in connection with the party. Two separate things.
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I have to admit, I don't really get the "no gifts" thing. It seems like the whole point of a birthday, and a birthday party, is getting presents. I'm almost 40 and I still want presents for my birthday (ugh, I don't feel great about having to write "I'm almost 40")! And yes, I get that it's a lot (we have a birthday less than a month after Christmas, we're currently swimming in presents) but I try to curb it by choosing our own gifts thoughtfully and getting rid of things they don't use so often to make room. We've also, after all the gifts have been opened and the kids have gone to bed, stashed some of them to be pulled out later or donated. I pick the things that he didn't seem so interested in and hide them in a closet. Last year the bulk of it went to Toys for Tots the following weekend. This year I hid all the LEGO sets to be pulled out on rainy weekends when we're driving each other crazy.
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@ElbieKay: love this idea, thanks for sharing.
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I'm strictly in the no presents camp. It's the norm here. My almost 3 year old has been asking about his birthday presents and I explain that in our family we don't do gifts. I then point out how his grandparents (my inlaws) don't give Christmas presents,but my parents do. Each family is different, but there will be some super awesome birthday presents for him to open.
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@MenagerieMama: Do you get a list of desired items from the animal shelter ahead of time? Can I ask what you write in the invitation? My daughter would love this.
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We have always done no gifts, but this year, my son was old enough to really notice what was going on at his friends’ birthday parties throughout the year, and started asking for presents at his party. We have always preferred no gifts because we want to teach him to value people over presents and quality over quantity, and to avoid having to deal with all of the clutter and waste. When we attend birthdays ourselves, we always bring books as gifts.
We went back and forth about it for a while, ultimately deciding to skip putting “no gifts” on the invitation this year. We are in it for the long game – we worried if we forced it now, that later on he would rebel and become OBSESSED with getting gifts, that it would backfire and make him more materialistic.
It ended up not being as bad as I feared! Before opening any gift, we had him sign his name and write the name of the gift giver on the thank you cards. He opened the gifts after the party, and we squirreled away some ones that he didn’t start playing with immediately to bring out throughout the year. I will say I was afraid we would get a lot of junk he’d play with once and then never use, but people were thoughtful about it! A bunch of parents reached out before and asked what he likes, so I told those ones that gifts aren’t necessary, but if they did want to get him something he likes arts and crafts and science. Everyone still brought gifts but some were small, like just a box of colored pencils – which was perfect. Or if anyone asks you could suggest experiences, or a donation, or something like that.
We also always keep Christmas and our own birthdays very small in terms of gift exchanging with our extended families, which we plan to continue.
Let us know how it goes! I am really hoping to raise a child that is careful in his consumption, so I am curious how it goes for others as well.
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@shabang: I’ll have to look up the exact wording, but something like: “No gifts please! LO will be collecting donations for local animal shelter XX so if you would like to bring pet food or supplies it would be welcome!” Last year we did evites so I put a link to a wish list the shelter had. Some people brought things and some didn’t. The feedback we had from parents was great - low stress and kids had fun picking something out. We had a box that LO decorated to hold things.
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@MenagerieMama: Awesome, it's a great idea.
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I have been observing what is going on in my son's circle since he was in preschool, and interestingly, we haven't been invited to a single no gifts party. We live about 50 minutes NE of NYC.
I personally have no issue with giving or receiving gifts. The way I look at it is that the friend parties of K-4 eventually evolve into to the birthday child plus 2-3 close friend experiences kind of thing, so it's not like they will be buried under a mountain of plastic junk for the next 18 years.
At my son's last friends party, this was the list of gifts received, every single one of them represented what he likes to do with that particular friend, my son's heart was so warmed as he opened them and read who they were from:
remote controlled drone
minecraft lego kit
$25 gift certificate to a jump place
$25 amazon gift certificate
outing to arcade
set of Kinex
Headbandz game and DogMan Book
laser pegs race car building kit
set of three roblox figures -
@looch: Maybe it's the age different (or the small space difference), but out of the about 10 parties we've been to this school year, 3 have been "no gifts" parties. 1 just said no gifts, and the other 2 had alternate suggestions: 1 asked for some canned goods to donate to our local food pantry. 1 asked for kids books to donate to a hyper local charity that gives books to Boys and Girls clubs in underserved areas (the mom founded the charity).
I felt like when the kids were younger, it was a more 50/50 split of no gift parties. Maybe because 5 is now old enough to understand the gifting tradition of parties.
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@Anagram: Who knows. For every person that says they have been to none, there has to be a person that says that's all they attend. I bet I could easily find that person in my son's elementary school! I don't think we have to be separated by geography.
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@Mrs. Carrot: at 6 I think if she wants presents that you should consider letting her have them atleast once. Its kind of one of the perks of parties. What we have done in the past is after opening the presents if they are duplicates of things we already have we can return them or pass them on to someone else. But its still fun to get presents at that age
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In this discussion let's also please remember that giving gifts is some people's love language (like mine) and I *LOVE* giving thoughtful, age-appropriate, open-ended, experiential and/or consumable gifts to those I love. So if I was close to a child and someone told me no gifts, I'd be bummed.
Some people also love to receive love via gifts.
You can also squirrel things away or donate later.
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We do no gifts. I've explained the environmental aspect to LO - how all of that plastic has to be produced and shipped from across the world and it's not good for the earth so we want to lessen our contribution to all that. Plus we talked about how he still does get presents from close friends and family.
Ultimately I told him he could have a smaller party (like 5 kids) and get presents but I just couldn't justify a big party (like 25 kids) with presents because it's too many. He said he'd rather have the big party and invite everyone he wanted and have no presents, so that's what we did (and a few people did bring presents anyway).
Not sure if we'll keep it up as he gets older (he's 6 now), but the more I read and stress about things like climate change, the more I realize it's the culture we've created and we're all contributing to it. It's going to take rethinking our lifestyles to begin to fix it and I feel this is one small way we can play a part. Plus, my kids want for NOTHING and are extremely privileged in so many ways, so I don't feel too bad for them not getting a million gifts on birthdays. sorry to be a Debbie Downer!
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Thank you all so much for the input, you all gave me a lot to think about. I hadn’t considered the lesson of gracious gift receiving and that’s something we definitely need to start working on. Thank you thank you.
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@hummusgirl: I really agree with what you said.
I'm a fan of the idea of no gifts, but my DD turned 5 a few months ago, and, as it was her very first friends party, I felt like I couldn't say no gifts, as around here every party has gifts. I think in the future though I will give the kids the option of either having a party with only gifts from friends (and none from us), or requesting the gift they want from us and saying no gifts from friends.
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we did a few no gifts parties when they were little, but now that they are older it is something they look forward to. most close friends ask what they need or want, which can be helpful. also, we only do birthday parties every second year. on a party year we don't buy them a gift from us (maybe something very small), and on a non party year they may get something bigger, plus a fun family day together.
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