Is this dictorial and controlling?

[Paddingtonthebear]

Asking grandparents not to buy a young child more than 2-3 presents for Christmas/birthdays.

When I was a child, I received one present from one DGM (widow/pensioner with 21 grandchildren) and tons of presents from other DGPs (both working). I didn't compare. It was just the way it was.

Anything you don't want them to have - box it up and say they can keep it at grandma's house. Then take it next time you go and leave it there.

She will soon back off.

Yanbu. I would have no problem asking people to tone it down.

I agree - YANBU. We tend to do one present per child from each set of grandparents, costing between £10 and £20. No room in our house for lots and lots extra per child. Am quietly scratching my head here at the thought of where I would put it.

YANBU or controlling IMO but I had exactly the same difficulty with my MIL for the first 3 Christmases of DS's life.

It sounds lovely and generous but she was just buying tons of crap much of which wasn even age appropriate. His 2nd Christmas we struggled to fit all the presents in the car boot as she'd got so much. He is an only child too and the youngest of her grandchildren by 15 yrs so she had focused all her present buying on him.

My situation resolved itself as she was ill last Christmas so sent money instead which was so much easier all round. She's decided to stick to doing money from now on as we told her how much he'd loved the things we'd got him with it which of course were things he'd actually wanted.

YANBU, of course you can limit the volume.

My parents buy one gift each but xils buy a huge amount "from santa". The difference being though, that my parents are on the other side of the world so we would end up overrun if they bought more, but xils keep all of their gifts at their house as the dc stay there regularly so I don't mind the extra gifts. If they were expecting us to have all the toys in our house I would definitely impose a limit, or at least tell them to keep some back as we don't have the room.

I do think itstoo much-storage will be a problem and the kids will be overwhelmed. I would try to talk to them about one nice thing your child would really like.

Could you strongly encourage them to pay for activities for your DC? Like little Jenny would love to take swimming lessons or little Tarquin would love a day at the local zoo.

Could you try the approaching of asking them to buy something specific for the dc. I mean "Please would you buy duplo for pfb each birthday and Christmas" The sets are expensive so will hopefully help limit the quantity, it has excellent long term play value and they will still have a huge amount of choice of what to get? We only just sold ours and our youngest is 9!