Making presents fair when you have a merged family

[MichelleDJ]

I have 2 step children, 2 daughters from a previous relationship and 2 young sons with my husband. At Christmas the older children get 2 sets from presents, one from us and one from their other parent, but the younger boys only get one set of presents from us. The older children also get presents from Grandparents of the other children too so get even more presents.

As they get older the younger ones are going to realise that they get less than the others and I'm not sure how to handle that.

If we spend more on the younger children, the older ones will get jealous (this is a major problem anyway), but I feel it is unfair that they get less because their parents are together. How do other people deal with this situation?

If you don't want any of the dc to have more than your joint dc, the only way to do that would be to not buy your sc or your older dc anything for Christmas or birthdays so that each child has has only one set of presents for each event.
The only thing I'm bothered about with my dss and dd is that we don't 'double up' on things like laptops so we would check with the other set of parents before we buy an item I would expect to be brought between houses as needed.

I have DSDs, a DS and also another DS with my OH - so Christmas is tricky! Sometimes we have our kids on the day, sometimes we don't.

What I've done is, no matter what happens, is to have our own 'Christmas' with everyone before the actual day - where we have a special dinner and we all do a 'Secret Santa' - put names into a hat and buy one present for one person each year. Anyone over 10 years spend their own money (£5-10) on that one person and we share the presents at this dinner.

Other than that, my OH sorts his own kids, I sort mine, and we share a little present for our own.