How would you phrase this?

[silverten]

OK, this is a bit complicated but I can't give loads of details for fear of being identified in RL.

DH and I have a relative who we would prefer to avoid. Circumstances are such that there will be occasions where we can't. Said relative has a child of a very similar age to ours. This year the relative sent (via other relatives) a present for our child. We didn't get their child a present and are not intending to- we'd prefer not to have that kind of relationship. The kids are so young that they won't be affected by this at the moment and we don't want them to be if we can help it.

We feel uncomfortable about accepting it but have decided that the least controversial course of action is to send a thankyou card saying something along the lines of 'thank you for the thought, really kind, but in the future we think it's best if we don't exchange gifts, expensive time of year blah blah blah'.

I am rather stuck on good ways to firmly convey the sentiment that we don't want to exchange presents in future, and good excuses for doing so. Was thinking that citing reasons of economy was a winner here, but any other suggestions would be welcome.

Would love to be honest about it but that is not really an option, all things considered.

Maybe they were just trying to offer an olive branch by sending a gift for your child if they're aware there's been tensions/issues between you?

Without knowing the reasons for you not wanting contact it's hard to say if it's a good idea to send the note

It may be an olive branch, but our interpretation of it is rather less charitable than that. Obviously I'd prefer not to accept this gift at all but this would cause more upset to others, which we don't want to do.

I just want to nip the whole present-giving nonsense in the bud before it gets out of hand!

Don't say thank you and don't send a present and they'll quickly get the message. Might think you a bit rude though.

Hard to say without knowing the full story. How about send a card just saying thanks, so you don't upset whoever. Then donate the present to a charity shop.

Without knowing the deets it's hard to say....

They must have done something truly awful for you to spurn their gift, and grudge reciprocating with a gift for their child!

Obviously it's difficult not knowing the full situation, but I would say something along the lines of expensive time of year, trying to teach DC that it's not all about presents, also time to think about those less fortunate so instead of giving presents to extended family (or outside immediate family at least) you would rather donate to charity.

We do that instead of Christmas cards and people are very understanding. (You can't argue with charity can you?)

Ooh thanks Rosie, that's a fab way of putting it- very helpful!

(I know you're all gagging for details but I really don't want to go into that. We've made our minds up that we don't want to cultivate any further relations. Weirdly its because we want to try and keep the kids (both of them!) out of the strained relationship we have with this person that we want to avoid presents in the future. At the moment they are both so small neither of them have a clue that they have or have not received presents, so there is currently no harm done.)

Brilliant suggestion about charity donations, but won't really stack up if you give presents to others they know in the next little while.

We had something similar with some ex-friends who'd been crap, when they were trying to pretend everything was OK. They sent a present for new DD. We wrote a brief card to say thanks, and wished them well (almost the kind of thing you write in a work 'sorry you're leaving' card.) It was something like 'thank you for x's little gift, much appreciated. Hope you all have a great year ahead.' (It was close to Christmas at the time.) It seemed to work - we wanted to leave things on a polite note, but also to hint at an ending. It seemed to work. I think they were the kind of people who just didn't 'do' endings, but maintained contact with people they didn't like and moaned about them in private or to other friends. I hate that.

I just didn't want to tell them any lies about 'oh, let's meet up/everything's great between us all', etc. So we simply didn't give a reason for ceasing contact (in our case, they knew damn well what the deal was.) This may not apply exactly to your case, of course.

Sounds like you really don't need to explain yourself too much. Sometimes less is more.