How I Politely Say NO To The Mountain Of Presents My Children Receive From Their Grandparents

Warning - first world problem here. The grandparents are giving my children way too many presents!

Ever felt like you were fighting an uphill battle about privilege and teaching your children that the holiday season isn’t all about getting gifts?

Grandparents often unintentionally derail those efforts and confuse your mindful messages when they lovingly spoil the kids with mountains of presents and new toys. I should know - my children are the first grandkids on both sides!

So how do you politely discourage too many presents from grandparents, without hurting anyone’s feelings? Here are some things I did:

Acknowledge their love and feelings

Apart from loving their grandchildren to bits, I have a theory on why grandparents always want to spoil them with gifts - maybe they feel that overloading their grandchild with lots of toys and presents is a sure way for the children to look forward to seeing the grandparents, and hence, their way of staying connected to their grandchild. They don't see gift giving as spoiling or over-consuming - to them it's just their way of showing their love.

I had to remember to be sensitive to this mindset, and understand the fact that our (Asian) grandparents best express their love through pampering and presents - they don’t really believe in the concept of minimalism and non-physical presents when it comes to their precious grandchildren. Telling them not to buy their grandkids so many presents was akin to saying, “Please don’t express your love and caring for our children.” Even trying to tell them that they will have to treat every future child equally didn’t dissuade the ongoing mountains of presents, sweet as that was, wanting to give their grandchildren all that they could.


IMAGE: UNSPLASH

Choose your battles

So no surprises, the presents didn’t slow down and I was sent away with a sweet, “All future grandchildren will also be met with the same amount of love as these two here now”. How was I supposed to argue with that logic?

So instead of repeating myself again, I was honest that having so many toys at one time meant that most of them got ignored once the novelty wore off, and that many of them didn’t get played with at all after a few days. My compromise was that if the grandparents couldn’t control the number of presents they were giving my children, then we would still graciously accept them all, but I would take out only one or two presents at a time, so that the kids could appreciate each toy and enjoy it fully, before getting the next one a few months later. Win-win.

And when the kids were a little older, and understood the concept of giving to the less fortunate, they would pick out one of their unopened, boxed presents and give it to someone who could enjoy it a lot more.

Suggest practical alternatives

Another way to discourage so many presents was by suggesting more useful alternate gift ideas for the grandkids. For instance, the grandparents could be the ones to pay for the needed music or karate classes, buy sports equipment, or even gift the children memberships to the zoo or the science museum, etc. This way they're getting the kids something useful that they would actually use, as well as making memories for life, instead of just getting them material things.

And if we were getting something big for the kids anyway, such as booking a holiday or getting a laptop or a phone, we could all chip in together and get them a joint family present that was going to be useful. My favourite gift was all of us pitching in for a family photoshoot together and creating new memories every year.

Tell them what to buy

And the next time the grandparents were getting ready to buy a mountain of presents, I suggested two presents each that they could gift for birthdays and Christmas. The idea was again, for it to be something useful that my child would use - and appreciate.

Gift ideas such as a particular action figure, or a specific dress, a Lego model they have been wanting for a while, these were all on my child’s wish-list - so why not get one of these instead of something they didn’t really care for in the first place.

It was a good solution for everyone. The grandparents didn’t waste their time or money on something that wasn’t going to be appreciated, and they earned a lot more brownie points getting the kids something they really wanted!

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