Presents that are more hassle than fun

[Bex5490]

Now before everyone jumps at me for how grateful I should be to anyone who buys my child gifts…I know this. I always send the thank you videos of DS gleefully opening said gifts and I’m more than grateful for the love and sentiment behind them. However…

Today I spent my one day off work trying to simplify a science experiment made for an 8 year olds for my 4 year old son! There is now rainbow food colouring on my carpets and a grumpy DS who is sulking because he wasn’t allowed to rub the chemicals on his face 😂

Over the years I’ve had a professional painting kit, a huge blackboard easel meant for a classroom and a second hand trampoline with no garden!

What were your (if any) most inconvenient gifts?

Me too and ds always gets bored and the bits get everywhere and they break!

Definitely Red Letter Day experiences etc, the number that have expired or cost us our own money to extend them is ridiculous. Latest was an experience with birds of prey which didn’t have anything nearer than a two hour drive away. I have had to spend £50 to “upgrade” it to one nearer to us which is only for one person so DH will have to pay entry to come and watch.

We had a Shard experience with afternoon tea a few years ago, which was great, but the afternoon tea was over a mile away on a boiling hot day and they had run out of gluten free scones. We had another afternoon tea one that was at a really downmarket hotel and everything tasted stale.

And with small kids in general

I have 2 girls close-ish in age. Dh's family always get them very different things, and the kids always squabble. My favourite examples are BIL handing over a bag of bits 'to share' which included 1 novelty unicorn hat. Que endless whinging over who's turn it was to wear the Hat of Wonder. FIL remembered he has DGC for the first time in a few years and sends 1 kiddy zoom watch (only 1 kid can play with this), and 1 set of walkie talkies (minimum of 2 kids to play, and if you press the wrong button due to being 3 they stop working). That lead to dd2 crying while dd1 hogged the watch. I ended up buying the age-appropriate watch for dd2 just to make it fair.

Yes! And when you get Christmas tree decorations with dates on them eg a tacky looking angel saying ‘Christmas 2017’ I just don’t like how it looks.

I forgot the enormous ride-on electric motorbike that DS was given when he was a toddler. It was huge and we had nowhere to put it.

And the table football that PIL bought DS to play with whilst he was staying with them once. So generous until, some time after his visit, they appeared with it at our house. It too was huge and we had nowhere to put it. I had to rearrange furniture to accommodate it and it became a dumping ground and dust magnet.

A newborn baby outfit saying ‘born in 2019’ when ds was five weeks old. It didn’t fit! And I don’t know what to do with it as the date is wrong for any other child!

Colouring books for adults m. One year I got four. I don’t do colouring. I don’t have time and they hurt my hands.

My aunt was not popular after buying us big tubs of finger paints. We painted everything in the garden with them. It was summer 1976, didn’t rain for weeks, hosepipe ban… so the garden was gaudy for quite some time. 🤣

Who bought that and why?

😂😂😂😂😂😂 - I have to say that these are all making me feel a lot better about my ruined carpet!

I just wonder if people get carried away or actually hate us!

The vouchers are probably someone getting carried away but if you were the recipient of slime, a garden toy mansion, a do it yourself egg hunt, a hand built sandcastle or ‘a fucking hamster’…I think it’s fair to say that you’ve definitely pissed someone off! ❤️

Anything massive is a big thumbs down for me. You know.. you put some time & effort into working out where to put your furniture, and then someone buys your kids a massive white elephant that sits in the middle of the floor TAKING UP SPACE

Rock tumbler for 5year old. Loudly tumbles rocks to make them smooth and polished. Takes 4 weeks with this thing clunking along like a constantly running washing machine. Every day you have to take stones out and check on them. Plus every week you have to change the grit inside it which is so messy and you can't let any grit down the sink because it will set like cement. I'm sat here now listening to the bloody thing.

OMG I have found my people on this thread. I will be back when my kids are finally asleep

I was given a Zorb experience as a wedding present. You know those ones where you climb inside an inflatable ball and they kick you down a hill. Possibly fun if you don't get dizzy easily and you were doing it with mates/your new husband. This was just for me alone - I was expected to go solo bouncing down a hill end over end because I had pledged my love to DH. That didn't happen.

A perennial plant when ds was born, it would bloom at the season of his birth for time immemorial. Which is great except the garden needed a space clearing for it, a hole digging and the plant bedding in. The time the gift giver stayed enjoying tea and socials on the day of giving it, would have been long enough to plant it out for me. But no.
I was coping virtually alone (DH worked looooong hours) with a baby with the worst reflux I've ever known (copious quantities of vomit all day every day), and was counting myself lucky if I was able to clean my teeth without interruption.
It sat like a lump of guilt on my windowsill while I tried to keep it alive long enough until I could get chance to plant the damn thing, as the sentiment was so lovely. In the end I couldn't keep up with it all and it went in the bin.

I did - pre kids in my defence - buy someone kinetic sand once. 🫣

My mum went through a period of making everyone chutney and ketchup to deal with her allotment produce.

It was really frustrating, because I don't really eat chutney anyway, let alone home made stuff, so it would sit around for months making me feel guilty until I eventually gave in and chucked it out.

£15 meal out voucher for a family of 4. We'd need to spend another £50 to make a meal of it and it expired during COVID lockdown anyway.

I actually like that. Not as messy as real sand!

I still feel guilty for buying my friend’s son bath crayons.

"Buy a Gift" experience / day out / meal / hotel voucher boxes. Utter, utter rip off. Redeeming them takes hours or days of frustration... They usually end up going to waste, or the recipient has to put more money in. They are awful. I have received more than one, and all the give you is stress. Please, take it from me... never, never buy them for anyone. Just give them the cash.
Can you tell I feel quite strongly about this??? 😁

This really made me laugh!

Like when you say it out loud, ‘So to congratulate me on what’s supposed to be the most special day of my life, your trying to force me to stand in a ball upside down and let some 17 year old with spots and a name tag toe punt me down a hill??!!’

Fackkk offff! 😂😂😂😂😂

Red "sexy"undies from ex who'd I'd gone off physically and was in the process of going off in every other way. His excited face as he followed me around the flat urging me to try them on was actually sickening and meant I had to have the talk with him before we even got through the Christmas break 😭

I am now really worried that in the past I have bought people flowers, and bought slime kits and Hama bead kits for their children. They must think I hate them!

SIL got both mine plastic drums filled with other musical-ish instraments once - juat before she and my DB got divorced ... 😂 Recorders still give me PTS!

Sea monkeys for our eleven month old son from SIL. They're nasty looking tiny woodlice things, something I can't bear. I wouldn't have minded so much but I'd always spent a very generous amount for years on much older DNs (4 of them) and this was for our only child on his first Christmas.