Between the ages of 0 and 10, at what age are Christmas and Birthday presents the least important to the child?
Asked by
Val123 (
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November 24th, 2009
Purely hypothetical situation. Say you have two kids, ages 1 yr and 9yrs. Due to some crazy, perhaps quantum situation, you can only give one of the kids 1 gift but can give the other 5 gifts. Which kid would you choose to receive the one gift? And vise versa, of course.
Don’t get logical on me, by saying, “Why not give each kid 3 gifts?” That kind of logic is not allowed!
(Actually, what prompted the Q is I was reading a Reader’s Digest story of a woman who had two kids, ages 12 months and 12 years. People pitched in to get presents for the kids, and the story noted that the 12 year old got a pair of cool boots and the 12 month old got “a pile” of presents”....
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22 Answers
Why not give each kid 3 gifts?
Tee hee. Sorry.
I’d give the 1 year old 1 gift and the 9 year old 5. The 1 year old doesn’t give a toss just yet.
I give boxes until the kids are five. Kids love empty boxes.
@johnpowell Oh, that is GREAT!!! Wouldn’t a huge refrigerator box under the tree be a dream come true for a kid??!! Give five big boxes, and spend the day building them a house, or a fort, or whatever!
Why would someone worry about a 12 month old??!!! Unless the family needs clothes for her/him. 24— mos old don’t know much unless there’s an older sibling or parents making a fuss.
Clearly a one year old is not cognizant of the meaning of a gift and certainly not the number of gifts. My grandson will be six months old this Christmas and I am getting him a few very simple things. @johnpowell is right; when my kids were small, they often loved the box as much as the toy!
1 year old doesn’t need gifts – the 9 year old will remember
The baby doesn’t care about gifts. The 9 year old does. Give the older kid the gifts.
Thanks @all My thoughts exactly…
Babies don’t know when they receive a gift. It means nothing to them. The choice is obvious to me.
I would have to say age 0.
Under age 3. They start to really get it once they hit 3 and would notice the difference.
Give the 1 year old 1 of those multi-activity games that have rolling parts, sliding parts and bangpng parts in a box big enough for the 1 yo to climb into. Then give the 9 yo a special gift like a new bike and 8 practical gifts, like a new sweater, books, simple games etc.so 9yo keeps the holiday in prospective.
At Christmas time my 2 sisters and 4 brothers were not shocked at all when our present pile started to decrease in size as we got older, we were all told, and understood that the older you get, the more expensive your gifts often become, and more often than not tehy shrank in size too! No longer did we want great big kitchen sets but tapes those things before cd’s and as we all know these are smaller!!
So I guess what I am saying is it could go either way- one big present for the little one and smaller but perhaps more expensive for the older. Or one little more expensive for the older and lots of smaller cheaper for the younger!
I would definitely give the 5 gifts to the 9 year old. That is just about the age that getting gifts at Christmas is the most exciting.
@Supacase Did you read the last sentence in the detail? That’s what I can’t figure out. It seems so common sense….well, unless they were REALLY expensive boots, and the baby’s toys were from the dollar store. That could be, but they didn’t say.
@Val123 I did read it. I think some of it is that people like shopping for baby things because they are cute. They feel like they are doing something for the basic needs of a small child – even toys at that age are largely developmental. And, now that I think about it, babies grow out of their clothes much faster. The biggest reason, though (IMO), is that babies give people a bigger warm fuzzy feeling.
The situation you mentioned, while certainly done with good intentions, was really a bit cruel to the 12 year old. :(
@Supacase I kinda thought so too. UNLESS he got some really expensive “designer” boots that he could wear so proudly to school, and the baby just got a lot of what the 12 year old would recognize as….worthless stuff. But still…12 months??
Age 0–1. And age 4 seems more important than 2 or 3. Peak seems around 5–6 I guess. A graph might look like this (the numbers on the y-axis show importance and excitement):
4 . . . . . . . . . . . . ._ _ _ _ _ _
3 . . . . . . . . . . . . / . . . . . . . . . .\ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
2 . . . . . . . . _ _ /
1 . . . . . . . /
0 _ _ _ _/
Makes sense?
@mattbrowne Yes, but….I’d put the age groups that are most excited as 7, 8 and 9. AND I’d use Excel to graph it!
Excel is definitely much better! Please excuse my experiment. I wondered what might work on Fluther without Excel. You really think a nine-year old is more excited than a five-year old?
@mattbrowne I’d say at least as excited….Lord, I can’t remember back to nine!
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