Invitation says ‘No Presents’

[RetroRay]

Evenin’ all,
My daughter has been invited to her first birthday party. The invitation says ‘No presents’, but I feel a bit mean rocking up with nothing to unwrap at his party.
Would it be rude to turn up with a small gift despite being told not to?
Apologies for the pathetic question. I don’t want to offend the parents if there’s a specific reason they’ve asked for no gifts 😂

get off your high horse . She never ever mentioned to me not to put bath bombs in the bath . She just came in one day and saw it in there. And my granddaughter does not have any skin condition that you can see , actually she doesn’t have any skin disorder at all, However I don’t put them in any more because I was asked not too , so keep your snarky comments to yourself .

It’s genuinely bizarre. The level of control some parents try to exert now, the over-analysis and specific expectations about each precise gift to the extent that they are banned. Whatever happened to ‘thank you’ with a smile and appreciating that somebody bought something for your child. The lack of trust in other parents to being something appropriate, the snobbishness towards gifts, the lack of respect for their own child’s POV who guess what, may actually like a change of something to play with chosen by somebody other than family. I am so, so relieved my Mum didn’t ban us receiving presents as a child. I don’t know anybody in real life who would do this thank goodness, poor kids! What a joyless existence it would be to never take a gift to any occasion.

The child will be delighted, none of this banning of presents will have been suggested by the child, of course, who’s party it actually is.

Money is still a present. Stick to their wishes even if it's not what you would do.

Yes, they are hardwearing cardboard books that you read with little babies who can't be trusted not to rip the pages of normal picture books. My 4 year old grew out of them around 2.5 years old and now has hundreds of picture books, and is moving on to short chapter books at bedtime.

That's fab! Have a look at the link I posted above, you might find some more books you can read with your child. Reading is great!

Reading is great! It's a dump.

If you genuinely feel bad turning up to something empty handed I would bring a host gift, the parent is the one who put in all the work anyway!
I always did a bottle of fizz for mum for baby’s and toddler birthdays, obviously if I knew they drank it.

Yes rude to ignore and polite request.

To give another perspective. I wanted to do this for my child's birthday. They genuinely have so many things and it seems so unnecessary and creating expectations for young children. They only want presents because we create this as the norm for them. A party with their friends should be the purpose, not material things. I also feel it's quite grabby so wouldn't mind a small gift, but then that seemed an odd request too.

I would honour the request and that would include not putting money in a card. It is an important lesson to learn as things as you can, that ' things' you don't need are not really that important. Maybe the parents are thinking of the parents who may not be able to afford a gift. Think about those kids who never get a party and have to attend parties where the kids get piles of gifts. I used to be mortified when my son would get cards with£10 or sometimes £20 in because we could not afford to reciprocate. I used to ask DS what his friends would like and he would usually choose a bag of Haribo and draw his own card as he lived to be creative.
When you hear people on MN describe how many gifts their kids get at Christmas it is pretty obscene and one of the issues is that families that cannot afford to do this, feel they have to try. My daughter had a friend whose mum was a single mum of 2 and she would always HAVE to spend a minimum of £1000 on both the girls at Christmas and put herself into considerable debt which then affected the rest of the year.
A 4 year old will have a great time running around having fun and will not even notice whether there are gifts or not. He certainly won't want money.