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Christmas

From present ideas to party food, find all your Christmas inspiration here.

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Original poster

WWYD - Godparent present problem.

17 replies

WhoKnowsWhereTheMistletoes · 26/12/2014 00:26

DCs are 10 and 8. DS's two Godfathers are his uncles, his Godmother is a friend. DD has three family friends as Godparents. The two uncles buy gifts for both DCs. DS's godmother asked a few years ago if I minded only doing birthday gifts (I'm her DC's GP too) which of course I don't mind. But DD's 3 God-parents all buy her gifts for Christmas, so every year DD gets three more Christmas presents than DS. This has only caused minor, occasional irritation from DS to date, but today, DD opened a card to find a substantial amount of money from one God-parent and DS was understandably a bit upset.

Part of me feels that DS is just going to have to live with it, but it really doesn't seem fair (it never even crossed our minds when we chose the GPs). Part of me feels that we ought to make it up to him to some extent. WWYD?

OP posts:

BearFeet · 26/12/2014 08:28

Who is older?
I think it's a bit strange that an adult would only buy one sibling a present and not the other. Don't you?

JE1982 · 26/12/2014 08:48

One of my siblings has a godparent who is a millionaire so has always had very generous gifts (even now we're adults) whereas my godparents always sent token gifts/forgot entirely.

I don't think I ever felt resentful or that it was unfair. They're his godparents, not mine. DS just needs to live with the fact that his sibling has different relationships with different people, and that's ok. Valuable life lesson, tbh more valuable than whatever extra toy he might get if you try to "compensate" him.

Nerf · 26/12/2014 08:54

Tough really, and that's why we had family friends as godparents - I grew up with my aunts (and therefore my sisters aunts) as godparents and she had a family friend so always, and now, got 'special' treatment.
You can't make her share it, my kids all have different family friends as godparents and some are more generous than others. Just tell him it's a tiny part of life.

EugenesAxe · 26/12/2014 08:55

Either I would make up the difference myself, or I would ask the godparents to split whatever amount they were intending to give to DD between the children, in future.

BearFeet - I agree, but my DS' godmother is like this too; not uncommon. She has quite a few to buy for and isn't rolling in it.

EugenesAxe · 26/12/2014 08:58

Although reading the posts about life lessons, you do have a point. I don't know if I'd bother 'making it up to him' with toys (generally, they are all shared anyway) but a great wad of cash is a little different.

Chocovore · 26/12/2014 09:00

I think that is ok. You chose that person to have a special relationship with one of your children. You didn't chose that person for the other child. You can't really then moan when the do treat their allocated child in a special way.

Nerf · 26/12/2014 09:08

Totally agree with chocovore. I'm godparents to one of two siblings in two families and if the parents now said 'can you not give little A 100 pounds but split it between the two?' I'd be slightly pissed off.

Original poster

WhoKnowsWhereTheMistletoes · 26/12/2014 09:08

DS is the older. He has AS, and a very highly developed capacity for keeping tabs on things like who has the most money, what present was received by who and when. He has always accepted it in the past, but was upset today. Having said that, I think it was just seeing it in cash yesterday, neither of them ever questions the value of their gifts and we don't particularly try to spend the exact same amount on each, as it all averages out in the end. I guess whoever you choose as godparents you are not able to predict how the relationships will turn out over the child's lifetime. I don't think it's odd to only buy for one sibling though, the Godparent relationship is a special one, we don't buy for all the siblings of our Godchildren either.

OP posts:

Original poster

WhoKnowsWhereTheMistletoes · 26/12/2014 09:12

Posted too soon. So, i have decided that he is just going to have to accept it, it will be forgotten about, and as we as a group of friends are all mutually agreed to only buy for GCs not siblings it is just the way it is going to be.

OP posts:

UniS · 26/12/2014 20:59

Do you HAVE to give DD her godparent presents in front of DS on christmas day. Are the godparents with you? or have they sent the present in advance. Can you not jiggle things a bit and give DD those presents a bit earlier some time when DS isn't around.
Is she still young enough that you can open suspicious cards, check the contents and bank it for her, maybe using a little of it to buy a book/ token present from godparent.
I do this with gift cards if I spot them arriving as DS doesn't get to go to the city and visit boots/ smiths very often ( we live in the sticks) but DH could visit branches of said shops in lunch hour.

DeWee · 28/12/2014 17:08

I agree with Chocovore. My 3 dc all have 2 couple godparents and they give in different ways.
Dd1: 1 gives several parcels only to dd1, also is talking about dd1 going to stay with her, 1 gives only to dd1, but doesn't always remember
DD2: 1 gives to all 3 1 gives to dd2, and often little extra presents-the only godparent we are still living near.
DS: 1 we've basically lost contact , 1 always gives to ds and sometimes gives to the others.

Dd2's one who lived near used to give to them all, but asked a few years ago if I minded if they reduced it back to just dd2 as although they only had 4 godchildren between the couple, this was about 15 children if you counted the siblings. I didn't mind at all.

I don't think the children (14, 11 and 7) think anything other than that is thier special person and isn't that nice. They all feel that they are "their person" and it would make it less of a special relationship if I insisted they were all the same.

I don't think Unis idea of banking most for her is a good idea. Firstly, the money is given to her, not for you to choose. Secondly that will just pospone the issue. At 18yo (or whenever) when he finds he has a smaller bank account waiting for him then you may well find he is just as resentful. At any rate my db was most upset when he found at that age that he had less than the rest of us in the trust fund that dgran had set up for each of us-because she died when he was 16yo, and me and dsis had reached 18yo, and we were only a small amount up from him.

Original poster

WhoKnowsWhereTheMistletoes · 29/12/2014 08:43

I used to bank or buy things for them with their cash presents when they were much younger (maybe up to 3 years old), but can't do that at 10 and 8. All vouchers received get the owners name marked on them and kept in a little stash till a DC wants to buy something, then they either use their voucher or trade it for cash with me. Their bank accounts have never been exactly equal because we started saving for DS before DD was born.

I could get DD to open her GP presents without DS in the room but that's tricky to engineer in the Christmas holidays when we're all at home the whole time and I certainly wouldn't want to make it into some sort of secrecy thing. As it happens one of her other GP presents is the most played with thing by both of them this year. I may encourage DD to spend it on things DS will enjoy using too, they have a lot of overlapping interests.

OP posts:

mckenzie · 30/12/2014 21:55

I've been wondering this too as this Christmas, my goddaughter's younger sister actually asked me if I had a present for her.
I've only ever bought for my goddaughter. I like the fact that we have a special relationship. I have a relationship with her siblings too but It's different.
If I bought for all my godchildren's siblings I'd be broke!! I think because I was late having my own family I was a good choice to be a godmother .
I'm very blessed with all of my godchildren. Maybe next year I'll buy siblings a small token gift. Shall I?

Nerf · 30/12/2014 22:11

I do xmas presents for all siblings (their godparents tend to do selection boxes or similar for my others and a present for 'their' godchild) and birthday presents for my godchildren only with a card for siblings if I remember

mckenzie · 01/01/2015 09:10

That sounds like a good compromise Nerf. I shall do that next year.

Nerf · 01/01/2015 09:51

Yes mine are thrilled to get chocolate and I don't mind doing extras at xmas when it's easy - offers etc. I'd rather not leave a small person out when it's a day about everyone rather than a birthday which is easier to understand.

BigBirthdayGloom · 01/01/2015 23:55

Our children's godparents do different things. Mostly they give just to their godchildren, a couple give a bit of chocolate or a pack of crayons to the others. Luckily, all of them see their godparents and the gifts aren't huge and all seem to give roughly equivalent. They love having special people just for them. We've started the tradition of them all going to choose small gifts for each godparent. It feels nice that its not all one way and for them to show they appreciate their godparents.

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