I was already struggling with how many Christmas gifts we should get for our son. It's easy to buy a bunch of stuff in the vein of things he likes, which right now includes musical instruments (he got a keyboard) and household cleaning (plus a mini Dyson). Maybe he'll like the new toys more eventually but he still mostly just wants to play with stuff that was already around the house, like the full-size vacuum, a Swiffer, the laundry basket etc.
Now doing Christmas with the families, our parents give Jack a ton more toys. And it's particularly silly to have a one and a half year old open a bunch of gifts in a row. He wants to play with what he's opened, or the box, or the wrapping paper, or the packing air bags. Opening the next gift isn't a priority. He has something new to play with already.
So really, this is just a rant about how it's over-the-top to give someone that age a whole bunch of toys at the same time. They don't need that much stuff to be happy. We certainly will encourage our kids to play sports, but getting a kid golf set, tee ball set, and basketball hoop is just too much at once. We won't be giving certain people options in the future if they are going to purchase every item on the list.
Of course we do have toys from when he was younger that he is finally playing with now, like a Tonka truck, some simple puzzles, and more. So I'm learning that having toys around isn't a real problem and he will probably get to them. I know that's how I function. There's always a backlog of entertainment, and I'll get to most of it in time. While he's certainly not thinking about it this way, clearly he wants to play with certain things now and that's his focus. And I can rotate the stuff he has available. I do want to keep the clutter to a minimum, but it's just going to be something to accept as long (and after?) we have kids in the house.
I'll say this too. Since our son was born in the summer, his first Christmas was when he was about six months old. Obviously a kid that age doesn't understand the holiday, even to the extent it's a time of gift-giving. This year at a year and a half Christmas is still over his head, (everything is for me!) but he enjoyed unwrapping gifts and that was fun for all of us. Though after doing a couple presents early in the month, I had to watch him closely to make sure he didn't unwrap everything else, his gifts and ours. It's already crazy how fast time is flying and how quickly kids grow and learn. I look forward to future Christmases, even though I'll probably get annoyed about this type of thing over and over.
Commentaires