Birthday parties and presents for other people's children - it's getting ludicrous

[Quattrocento]

DD is going to yet another infernal birthday party this afternoon.

The deal is that I pay for birthday presents. My limit is £15. This seems to me to be eminently reasonable. DD has then augmented the money with £10 of her own money, and has therefore spent £25 on this school-friend's birthday. Let's call the school-friend M.

When I asked her why she was spending so much inappropriately, DD explained that she thinks the average spend on birthday presents in her year is around £40. She reminds me that when it was her birthday party, M gave her the latest DS game, a beautiful embroidered and undoubtedly expensive purse with £10 spending money inside, plus an address book. DD estimates the value of M's various gifts to be well over £50.

Now this is just ludicrous. Absolutely ludicrous, and wasteful and inappropriate. Why do other parents do it? They must know it creates pressure for us to reciprocate in kind.

Blimey, that's total insanity, £40+ ??????

It's the pound shop in this house, or something under a fiver. I get them all in advance when I see cool things, so I can budget properly. The kids help me.

I did spend £7 on a Lego set recently for a little boy who I knew would appreciate it, but he's ds1's best friend.

We've got into the probably very lazy habit of giving £10 book tokens. My ds's love receiving these because it means they can go to the bookshop and buy star wars tat books where as I insist on decent reading books.
That's my limit for everyone though... Can't believe your dd's friend would spend £40!
Is she trying to buy your dd's friendship do you think?

If the average spend for 10 year olds is reckonned to be £40 or so I can only assume that the credit crunch hasn't yet hit in your neck of the woods (but would have still thought it ridiculous to spend that much even if there were no such thing as a credit crunch).

It's quite feasible that a 10 year old might be invited to 10 - and probably more - parties in a year. Several hundreds a year on presents for classmates is surely crazy ?

I think £15 is already very generous. With a bit of thought you can get a wide range of lovely things for kids of any age with that much ..... my limit is more like £7.50.

It's sad your daughter is feeling the pressure to "make up" the supposed "difference" to the "going rate". I think I would have tried to put my foot down with her over this, especially as it wasn't a best friend or else where does it stop ? Will she literally be able to afford to keep doing this time after time ? It's more worrying why she feels she has to do this at all ...... has she described what she think will happen if she turned up with a £15 gift ? Are all the other kids really so mercenary and pre-occupied with what things cost that she would be sneered at and/or derided for being "mean" ?

As you say, why do other parents encourage this ? Do you know any of the others well enough to raise this with them in a lighthearted "this present business is getting out of hand isn't it" sort of way ?

Judging by the presents my children get the average spend is about £5 - £7.50 for classmates and £10 - £15 if if's one of the child's best friends. I have 3 children and can't afford to spend more than this!

If somebody's parents happen to be well paid and buy a more expensive present I don't think they should make a point of it or all the others will feel pressured to buy something more expensive for them, and that isn't really fair.

Anyway my children don't care about the price , more about the personal value of the gift. For instance DS1 would much prefer a £5 book token to a £10 build-it-yourself gadget.

£40 quid!!! If my kids got a DS game from one of their friends i'd be mortified. There's just no way i could compete with that. My max limit is a tenner for good friends and maybe 5 or 6 quid for just classmates.

It might be possible that its a preowned nintendo game?
[hopeful]

thats alot. we spend around £5-£10 per present. my neighbour has also made playdough as a present. i would very much welcome a present like that in our house!!!

weell, I do think quatt might be moving in higher-than-averagely-affluent circles , but present giving can become a sensitive area fpr anyone. So, you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack...

No. You may find yourself spending £5-£7.50 one year and then there is more pressure from some girls that presents are more cool, you clock the sort of things your dd is being given and you think, hmm I should think about increadsing my spend to £10-15.

Dd1 endured some catty comments recently because the make-up she bought as a present wasn't good enough. And it is surprising how many parents do collude in this.

The trick is to get somehting on trend but cheap. If you have the time and inclination to shop around (I don't but I try), you could get something pretty cool (in teh Tammy sale, for example).

I do think your dd is over estimating the cost of the gifts, quatt. Some people are very good at picking up lovely, trendy one-off gifts for a small price.

£5-10 seems to be the average round here. at £50 for a friends birthday!

DD is really quite grounded at the moment but I do wonder if her head will be turned. I hope she was overestimating the cost of M's gifts but I doubt it.

The DS game was top of the charts at the time and not available discounted, DD was chuffed with it because she'd been saving up for it.

If this isn't the norm then her class at school has got stuck in a godawful bubble of competitive present-giving. I'd like to get out of it pronto.

hmm, easier said than done. Unless you can take a little more time to source desired but cheaper presents with dd.

It's not the norm most places, Quattro. DS (9) just had a birthday party, and most his friends gave him a fiver's worth, a few of his best mates' stretched to a tenner's worth.

That is ridiculous. They will end up spoilt and having no appreciation for the smaller things in life. My DS is 4 and the most I spend is £10, but I really try to limit to £5. At this age (4) they don't care how much things cost, and long may it last in our house!!!

age 4 is easy

I find that if the children have to earn the money ie it's through pocket money for completing chores they are much less generous in splashing the cash.
Where as if it's mum's money or they just get pocket money just because then why wouldn't you spend £25, heck I would myself.

I was going to come on here and say don't be a miserable sod, but having read your post in full, I'm shocked - that's more than I spend on family! Agree that £5-10 is appropriate, maybe a bit more when they get older - but I'd only go up to £15 max.