My Over-Giving Family Is Spoiling My Child

This past week my family and I celebrated my 28th birthday. One of the reasons it was so enjoyable is that this year I’m really settling into feeling content with my life and not feeling like I need or want anything at all. Just being with my family was more than enough and I was quite happy to have just a few practical gifts, useful things for my home and business, just the way I wanted it to be. No muss, no fuss.

But there was one thing that got me down: my 3-year-old daughter got presents, too.

Trust me, I’m not jealous that my daughter received gifts on my birthday, but to put it kindly, I was irritated. Both my mother and my grandmother had each decided on their own that my daughter couldn’t be left without presents on this occasion, proving to a 3-year-old that, as she put it ”See Mommy, little girls DO get presents on their mommy’s birthdays!”

Cringe. Major cringe.

See, I’m really trying as best I can, in this age of excess that we live in, to raise a little girl who isn’t overly concerned with materialistic wants and needs. BAHAHA. Yes, I hear you laughing and I’m starting to think it’s funny too. Sometimes with all of the non-stop giving on holidays, birthdays and for no reason at all, it just feels impossible.

This year Christmas was a circus. Five grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, great-aunts and uncles, and friends all had gifts for my daughter. The gifts seemed to start two weeks before Christmas and go on and on and on. I spent months making my girl a handmade kitchen to be her one big exciting gift and she truly loved and appreciated it come Christmas morning. She finally knew, that’s what I had been in the basement making all those weeks when I wouldn’t let her come downstairs!

But as the excessive gift-giving went on (for days) her enthusiasm for the presents seemed to dissipate. And with the sheer amount of toys, clothes, books and  just plain j.u.n.k., how can I really have expected her to fully appreciate any of the presents?

Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas. When I was young, Christmas was a big freaking deal. It was awesome, but it lasted two days (Christmas Eve and Christmas Day) and then it was done. No presents until my birthday. But the last two years have left my family of three feeling desperately overwhelmed with stuff. It’s not only that we have no place in our small single family home for all the toys. It’s that I simply don’t believe a 3-year-old needs weeks upon weeks of endless gifts for any reason.

Perhaps I would feel differently if friends and family reserved the giving for just Christmas and her birthday (which happens to be two and half weeks after Christmas). But the giving doesn’t stop there. It seems every time I turn around someone has gone and gotten her a new dress, toy, book, shoes, a gift from their recent vacation or for no reason at all. With Easter just around the corner, I’m already worried about the overwhelming mass of crap we’ll be carting back home after dinner —  and what, once again, my daughter is learning from all of this.

I’ve tried as best I can to explain my concerns to at least some members of my close family, but I don’t seem to be getting anywhere and I’m getting fed up.

It doesn’t help that this topic is a touchy one. Try explaining to your 85-year-old grandmother who says it’s her ”one joy in life” that she can’t give your daughter gifts every single week when we take her to lunch. You can’t do it! Or, I can’t. I smile and thank her and make sure my daughter thanks her profusely so that she has this joy in her life, superficial or not.

But it’s constant and from all angles, and that’s where my worry sets in.

I’m always trying my best not to buy her things she doesn’t need, but so what? If everyone else is doing it without pause, what are my husband and I really teaching her about being appreciative?There comes a certain point when a child will become so accustomed to how much is being given that they just come to expect it.

I’ve also seen the harm in how over-stimulated my daughter seems after all the incoming gifts post-holiday. She isn’t happy and pleasantly occupied. She is so overwhelmed that she seems to lose focus quicker and bounce from toy to toy. She melts down easier and says she’s ”bored.” When there is less to choose from, she truly is more appreciative and she’s definitely more creative and imaginative in how she plays.

So, not to sound like a total scrooge, but the reality is that a lot of this stuff is going to be returned or taken to Good Will from this point on. Not only because I don’t want my house junked up with more toys than it can hold (I don’t). Or because I’m becoming more and more uncomfortable with the amount of crap we own (I am). But because I believe that a less-is-more approach helps children live more contently and with more gratitude.

(photo: infografick / Shutterstock)