To say No to this charity BS

[EffingBirthdays]

DS9 and 3 school mates are sharing a birthday party in few days .
I ve made a point to the other mums that we should add a note to what’s app group to kindly bring one present max , absolutely no need for anything more as kids will share

Thats when one of the other mums had the bright idea to donate ALL gifts to kids related charity - apparently her friend did it with her kid and it was massive success all parents were very happy etc

WTAF! Party is not cheap, and how the fuck do I say this to ds?

I don’t mind donating the odd gift but we have more than 40 kids invited, wtaf?

all other 3 mums agreed, wtf do I do? AIBU?

Thats when one of the other mums had the bright idea to donate ALL gifts to kids related charity - apparently her friend did it with her kid and it was massive success all parents were very happy etc

Call me cynical but unless I actually see the presents being donated, I assume it has not been done and it was a way to dodge gift giving.

How would three kids living at different addresses share one gift anyway?

I would suggest a present table for each child, tell them your child will be taking their presents home and they can do what they like with theirs. I bet they will give their kids their gifts!

I like this idea from @Pineapplewaves

I'm all for charitable giving but...

I wish people would just give to charities themselves, and not on behalf of others, unless someone has specifically requested it!

And youngsters are certainly not going to either understand or appreciate it. It's a mild form of control and abuse.😀 There are other ways to teach them to be caring and charitable.

Well fair enough if you disagree. Although I think most 9 / 10 year old are capable of understanding ‘only one is for you’, just like picking a lucky bag from a shop of a gift from a bran tub! They’ll never know what’s in the other gifts, so no disappointment on what they’ve missed out on.

I don’t think there’s any harm in teaching children that giving to charity is a nice thing to do, especially when so many are struggling at this time. The joy of giving is greater than receiving! At 9 I think they can handle that, although as they are still young and it’s the first time doing it this way it’s reasonable to also sweeten the pill with a treat of a different nature. My opinion.

So does the "one gift only" mean "pick some random toy - anything it doesn't matter - it's going straight to charity anyway" or "you just buy for Bob and not the other 3 - Bob loves cars. But it doesn't matter - it's going to charity anyway" ?
Just baffling.

Totally agree with this!

I'd drop out of the party and personally invite 3 or 4 of your childs closest friends round for a birthday tea.
Those big parties are horrible anyway.

I'd have rather threw £20 in a pot and the pot shared between the 4 kids. This is the problem with sharing their party I suppose, I get why you tried to make it better on the guests, but absolutely no way should it all go to charity.

Could you agree to contact all the parents to suggest they buy one gift only, and tell them who it's for. And then each family decides what to do with their own child's gifts?

No, no and thrice no.

That's uncool for 9 year olds. A wedding, or 70th birthday or 50th wedding anniversary celebration maybe. Also people like giving gifts and some parents might be put out.

Suggest instead a spend limit to send the invitee mums. Like a fiver.

Or have they already ploughed ahead?

I would say to her "but your children have never seen you give all your presents away so why would they expect you to give their presents away?"

When i see a please no gift, I feel sad for the bday kid. Of course, kids want to open presents on their birthday.

Donations to charity instead...seriously, I cannot stand this. They can give to charity themselves, I donate to the charities I want. Again, makes me feel sorry for the bday kid

Sharing a party with 4 kids is madness in my opinion. Too many chiefs and all that.

Many parents would have already bought a gift, i certainly would have. To ask just to bring one present was considerate IMO considering there are 4 kids.

Next time, have your own party!

If it's only a few days away how can you do sharing either! Lots of people will have already bought the presents they planned to give.

It's too late to be sending out new instructions to people. And you will all piss people off if you say this late on that you are gifting them to charity or want money etc.

If you wanted to do anything different you should have told people ages ago when invites went out.

The whole thing is totally bonkers, firstly the suggestion to take a random gift and secondly to give the random gifts away

as a parent of an invited child I'd have no clue what to buy and then would be pretty pissed off that having taken the time to think of something it was given away

Stupidity at its finest

When my children were that age if the party was for more than 2 children the invitation had wording along the lines of not buying three presents and you child had been invited by X,Y ior Z and to buy for that child - equally shared on the invitations

Giving a child’s birthday gifts away is just awful. How would those parents feel if they themselves had a celebration involving gift giving, say an engagement, and someone arbitrarily announced all gifts were to be given away - how would they feel?

Virtue signalling at the children’s expense… dreadful behaviour.

presumably the 4 boys have either joint friends, or single friends. So in that case when my DC have been to such parties, we have either bought a present for the actual friend, and a card for the others the DC don't really know.

and for parties where they were friends with all the birthday kids we usually got joint presents with the other friends who were invited.

It's not rocket science.

As for all the "who wants tat" comments. Do you buy tat for other kids? i never have. That's just mean/daft/weird.

Good god, these kids are 9, they’re gonna know this is dumb.

how thick are these other mums? They sound ridiculous!

unless there is an agreement to allow the boys to choose a couple of gifts each and donate the rest, this is going to be a disaster of a birthday

@EffingBirthdays divide and conquer, call them up individually and express your concerns and hope that someone’s only brain cells actually meet together in their head.

Has anyone asked the children?
(sorry I have skimmed so might have missed this)
I can only imagine how disappointed they will be to see their presents being bundled up and taken from them. They are entitled to a choice in this.

What if family member turn up are you going to confiscate their gifts too?
You have to give the attendees the heads up too.
If the mothers want to generate charity donations let them do it in their birthdays.
I suggest this is being driven by the parent of the charity friend who would like to be seen as virtuous at little cost to herself.

If you have to go along with it I would say no presents please but we will be requesting a donation to X charity. Promise your child a trip out/sleepover etc with a few special friends to make up for ut.
And NO MORE shared parties ever again.

say ‘having thought more about the 1 present idea and gifting to charity, I’m thinking it’s not going to work - we’ve left it too late as people will have spent time picking out gifts for a specific child and we would risk annoying/offending them’

If the party is only a few days away then many people will already have planned and bought a present, so it is really unfair to change this now. It should have been stated on the invite.

"That's a lovely idea in principle, however on my birthday I still enjoy the thrill of presents. I've asked ds and he'd prefer presents and to be able to donate some to charity afterwards. Let me know what your dc would like to do and I'll draft a text to parents'

To be honest the whole thing has disaster written all over it. You expect 4 young boys to be able to share out the gifts amongst them with no arguments? What about the one super amazing gift that they all love, who gets that? Who gets left with the regifted crap that's not even age appropriate?

It's highly likely the parents have suggested donating them because of your stupid one gift rule to begin with.

Charity bullshit indeed
Where are these magical charities that are awaiting wrapped birthday presents suitable for 9 year old boys. Which parent is going to load, unload, store, reload, deliver during working hours these gifts?
Unless Father Christmas has a drop off point locally, the charity angle is bullshit, you might as well say you'll be donating all gifts directly to Council Landfill.

If I bought a present for someone, child or adult, I'd be pissed off if it was given away immediately.
I prefer to make my own charitable contribution.