The No. 1 thing parents need to stop doing when buying gifts for kids: ‘It can backfire’
It can be tempting for parents to put too much thought into our kids’ holiday gifts. If we can find the perfect educational toy or cultural experience, maybe our kids can turn into geniuses or win a football scholarship.
Doesn’t help when stores press “genius” toys and unforgettable experiences. But here’s what parents forget: The more we try to make the most of our kids’ holiday gifts, the more we miss out on the joy that’s available right now.
As a health ethicist and mother of two, I have good news: Your child’s development doesn’t depend on finding the perfect gifts. You can resist the urge to over-engineer and still do what’s right for your family.
If you need a release from pressure to optimize this holiday season, here are four reframes to help reduce risk, protect the game for its own sake, and put wealth ahead of performance.
1. There is no magic key
Endless reviews, algorithms and AI tools make it possible to find the perfect gift. If we skip the hunt, we may feel like we didn’t try hard enough.
But when we zoom out, we see that this is just one of hundreds of parenting decisions we’ll make this year. The effects of one small choice, such as what to buy for the holiday, will outweigh all other factors affecting our children’s development and well-being. No single gift determines the course of life.
So we can stop searching on Amazon for the mythical gift that will magically unlock our children’s potential and give them a direct path to success. Unfortunately, there is no such thing.
2. More is not always better
Chasing the best can backfire if we think “best” means flashy or high-tech. Research shows that when it comes to play, simple, classic toys often result in higher quality play than more elaborate, scripted ones. Open-ended toys leave more room for imagination.
That extra something we hope to squeeze out of “perfect” is often not in the product itself. How we look is important. Like Nicola YellandProfessor of early childhood studies at the University of Melbourne notes: “Any toy can be educational when you play with your children and talk to them about what they are doing and learning.”
Instead of worrying about the perfect gift, we can focus our efforts on finding the right one and then be ready for it.
3. Support, don’t engineer
It’s good to want children to learn and grow, but it’s easy to take that desire too far. When our gifts or enrichment plans aim to develop skills and abilities, play begins to feel like work, which can undermine intrinsic value.
Nor are the gifts of experience immune to collective development efforts. Writer Faith Hill He states that even family travels now come with growth goals. Our hope is that a trip abroad will help our children become more adaptable, resilient and cultured. Productivity culture can sneak in anywhere.
But when we stop viewing every moment of free time as productive learning, we can create more space for joy, curiosity, creativity, and connection; these are values worth pursuing for their own sake, not just as a means to future success.
“What could this help my child become?” Instead of asking, “What might this invite my child to notice, enjoy, or share right now?” we can ask.
4. Love can be enough
Nothing we buy our kids for the holidays will get them into Harvard. And that’s okay.
As a developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik He reminds us in his bookGardener and Carpenter“Our job as parents is not to create a certain type of child or shape their destiny, but to create a space of love, security and stability in which they can thrive.
We don’t need to calculate which gifts will bring the greatest developmental return to our children. Holidays are a chance to help our children feel important Now. And if we can do that, that will be more than enough.
Jen ZamzowPhD, is an assistant professor of health ethics at Concordia University Irvine, an author, and a mother of two young boys. You can find it in him bottom stack “A Life Well Lived” newsletter.
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