Giving Gifts

With twins and a toddler, gift giving can be a bit challenging. Although it looks like there are thousands of toys out in the world, half of the toys are immediately eliminated from contention simply because they are geared for children of the opposite gender. (While I am not opposed to giving the boys gifts that might be considered "girl" gifts, that issue hasn't really come up yet.) And when you have two kids the same age, you're already limited gift choices drop exponentially. Plus, by the time the toddler reaches any given age, it seems like he already has half a toy store at his disposal. Finding something new and interesting for him is just as difficult.

Really, you have two options.

1) Buy the same toys for everyone. This may seem like a valid option, but in practice it doesn't really work. You could have FIVE of the exact same toys in your house expecting that everyone will play harmoniously together because, hey! everyone has his own toy! The problem is, the ONLY toy child A will want is the one his brother has in his hands. Of course no other toy will do, and shame on you for trying to get child A to see that the other four toys are just as good. Besides, it can be incredibly boring to have two of everything (for them and for me). Sigh.

or

2) Purchase only one of any given toy, directing each toy to the child whose interests and/or personality best matches it. You know, do the same thing parents of single children do all the time. This option sounds plausible, really it does. Yet, with the limited choices of toys available and the fact that your children spend every waking moment together, trying to find that perfect toy for one vs. the other is harder than one might think. What one likes is often what the other likes, which gets tricky. For the toddler, you just pray like heck that there is something, somewhere he doesn't already have access to that he'll like.

So what's a mom to do? To some extent, I try to make things somewhat comparable between gifts for the boys. How do I make things "fair" without going crazy in the process?

I found a blog that talked about simple gift giving. This year I'm going to try it and see if it helps. It goes something like this.

Gifts are designated into different categories:

• something they WANT
• something they NEED
• something to WEAR
• something to READ
• something to WATCH
• something to LISTEN TO
• something to PLAY WITH
• something to CREATE

What I like is that these categories are gift giving guidelines. Hopefully they will help keep me organized in my shopping, making it easier to keep things fairly balanced. I have given myself permission to give group gifts and decided the boys aren’t necessarily guaranteed an item in every category. So we shall see how it goes. I'll keep you updated on my experience this year.

P.S. I'd love to hear your thoughts!