When will I have to start being "fair" about Xmas?

[NotQuiteCockney]

My two boys have a three-year gap. DS2 is 15 months. So far, I haven't bothered much with fairness in general, and particularly not for Xmas. DS2 has loads of toys, he has all of DS1's old ones, and plays with many of his current toys, too. So I don't really bother buying him much new stuff.

I know he won't notice this year, but will he when he's 2? Or 3?

Last year my elder two didn't compare gifts but I think they will this year (they are now 6 and 4.6) so I have been quite careful about being "fair". Littlest one is 17 months and won't care

i think i started trying to be fair with how much i spent when dd was about 7 and ds 10. they didn't seem very aware of prices till then.

Yeah, fair point. I guess I'm concerned about size of pile of stuff, too.

But then, DS1's big present this year is a digital camera, and DS2 is getting ... I'm not sure.

I've always tried to be fair in terms of size and number, rather than price. They still eye each other's piles up at 10 and 8 but I've not set seen the cash registers switch on in their eyes!

My sister is 1 and half years younger than me and we both got equal amount of toys, but it used to bug me that a lot of them were the same/similar, cos my sister might open one first so I'd know what it was! on the other hand, it could've caused disappointment if sis had got something i wanted but didn't get!

NQC when the boys were younger I used to weed out ds1's toys when he outgrew them, and "put them away" in the loft for 6 months or so, and then get them out and give them to ds2 as presents for birthday and Christmas. (When ds1 was a bit older I explained to him in advance of ds2 unwrapping them, and he was fine about it.)

As well as saving money, it meant we didn't get inundated with endless unnecessary toys.

My mother never bothered about the amount of money spent - we just had an equal number of presents. She always said one might get more money one year, and the other the next. We always accepted that, and to be honest we never cared about who got more spent on them. I'm not going to worry about it either!

ours are 3 and 5 and their birthdays are 10 days apart. This year dd2 had her first bike - and there was nothing equivalently big that I could think of for dd1 - so we just risked it. Told her she'd had a bike a couple of christmases ago, that dd2 didn;t have one, so it was fair that she got one for her birthday - was a bit worried how she's take it but she was fine about it - even helped dh chose it. So I think that if there's a rationale and if they can see "bigger picture" fairness they can be ok about it for a while yet.

I worry more about size piles and amount of pressies than how much i spent.

Infact they have to have the same amount of things else I lose sleep over it.

NQC it's not the younger ones, you need to worry about the older ones IYSWIM.
When ds2 had his 1st christmas he was 9mo, but I had to fill his stocking (in terms of number rather than value of prezzies mind you) otherwise ds1 (4.5) and dd (a perceptive 2.5) would have queried it!

roisin, that's a good idea. So far, they seem to just play with the same stuff all the time!

Oh, and hativity ... mine have birthdays two days apart. So yeah, I have to worry about fairness then, too.

I did do a stocking, and a big gift, too, for DS1 last Xmas. He was 3 months. I think I'm just aiming for smaller piles this year, the amount of toys in this house is just silly.

What do you do if you have a huge age gap between two kids?

My sister is 15 years younger than me. When I was a child there wasn't much money spare, but my mum always made a huge effort to make sure I had lots of nice presents. She did the same with my sister, though there was more money around when she was little. She's always had hundreds of pounds spent on her, while for years, I've received a bottle of perfume or something. Fair enough, she was a little kid and I wasn't.

She's 18 now and the situation remains. Not sure how my mum will resolve it, as my sister continues to expect huge amounts of money to be spent on her. My mum recently bought a new house, so things are a bit tight this year. She's not getting me a present this year, which I totally understand, but she continues to spend over £300 on my kid sister.

I don't feel put out by it, I just wonder how she'll resolve the problem !

My mum still teases me because I used to count the presents to make sure I had the same amount as my sister...

My dh only ever got ONE present from his parents - he still vividly remembers his combine harvester corgi toy - and any other presents (about six or seven in total) came from relatives. He has two brothers and it was the same for all of them. In fact one year, they gone ONE joint present of Scalextric. He says they never, ever felt hard done by. It certainly puts all our neurotic and extravagant present buying in perspective I think. He told me this last night and I found it really sobering.

But Aloha, it sounds like your DH's parents were scrupulously fair, at least.

I do think gift expectations have got higher and higher over the years. To a silly extent. For DS1's last birthday, we were opening presents for over a week. We just held onto the party gifts and opened the one at a time. (And they were stored in plain view, not up high, and he didn't open them himself, either!)

We're trying to cut down on gifts a bit this year, as the boys just have too many toys.

I felt a bit ashamed actually, that our children have so much and play with so little. Actually ds isn't deluged with toys compared to some kids I know, and he is really not very toy oriented, but in a way that makes it worse. He's getting mostly books from us.

Does no-one actually think of the giving any more? Does it have to be about price?

That seems to be the problem.

When I was little, there just wasn't the money, so I'd get books, Sindys, little things. I was so pleased with that.

My mum tried to "make up for it" by spending hundreds of pounds on my sister. She was six months old for her first christmas, I still remember my mum sitting her on the sofa and arranging her christmas gifts around her, then taking a photo. When I asked her why she was taking the picture, she said it was "to show everyone how much stuff she got"

My sister thus grew up with the idea that it was the amount that was spent that was most important. She still thinks like that, and so does my mum. She just doens't apply it to me, for some reason.

I'm with those who don't worry about 'value' but rather how they look - ie number of "large" presents versus number of "small" ones - and making sure that the piles are equal size.

dd wrote to Santa and asked for a bag of chocolate coins-now thats value for money,small and not bright plastic to clutter our home even more!

Havent bought anything for ds-he is only 15months