Too many presents from Grandma - is this bad for my child?

Question

I think that having a lot of things for your baby or kid like lots of toys or other distractions (iPad, presents, bad food with sugar) is not a good thing. This could create a behavior of only doing minimal effort to get what you want in life.

That said, the grandma of my baby is always giving her a lot of presents. I know that is the way that she demonstrates her love for my baby but for reasons explained lines above I don't think that a baby with a lot of things is a good idea.

My baby is 1 year and 2 months old. Is it a good idea at this age to have so many toys?

Answer 1

I think that having a lot of things for your baby or kid is not a good thing, like toys or any other distraction (ipad, presents, bad food with sugar). This could create a behavior of only doing minimal effort to get what you want in life.

Hold on, these are not all correlated to behavior. If you don't want your kid to play on an iPad, don't give them an iPad. If you don't want your kid eating sugar, don't give them sugar. These aren't life lessons, they are rules. Not raising an entitled or spoiled child has nothing to do with X number of toys they have or what they are given. Rich children that have everything they want can grow up to have a work ethic and empathy, and poor children can still be raised as spoiled brats depending on the lessons and reinforcement you provide.

Having lots of any one thing doesn't lump your child into an arbitrary category. What will is the direction you provide while they grow up. Grandma can give all the toys she wants, but a spoiled child comes not from random gifts, it comes from when you take them to a store or toy store, they grab something they want and throw a fit until you give in. It comes from them bending the rules and knowing they can break them or not keep up their end of the deal. It comes from knowing consequences won't be enforced. Not to sound harsh, but your child is 1. Having a million dollars worth of toys from Grandma is not even going to register as a blip right now, and she certainly isn't going to learn about giving minimal effort from an excess of toys.

The idea of behavior comes not from any physical item they are allowed to have, iPad, toys, whatever, it comes from the lessons that are reinforced and the boundaries that are made when encountering situations as they grow up which you provide a teachable moment and stick to your guns. Sugar in general is different just because you don't want to rot the child's teeth out, but even a cookie once in a while isn't going to hurt anything. Let children be children but steer them as a parent to make good choices when you can. If you arbitrarily set limits on everything they do in life, they are going to grow up with bitterness and animosity towards YOU, and things like that lead to them acting out when they get in a situation where they can do as they please. I think parents in general can get too absorbed in the whats and the limits as a means to an end, aka a well adjusted person, and not focus on the ideas behind actions that lead to that.

Answer 2

At that age, there are pros and cons to having lots of toys, generally they're very superficial. For example:

Pro: Very easily bored baby has lots of variety

Con: Parents have lots of picking up to do

If you don't want your child to "have" lots of toys but feel bad getting rid of gifts from grandma, find a place to store them that they don't know about and only keep a few out at a time. You can then swap them out when you/baby get bored with them. This makes it seem like there's only ever a few toys in the house while there are, in fact many. Alternatively, if you have a daycare, they love toy donations and it's a great way to teach sharing. Thirdly, if you want to teach about working for things you want, make the number of toys out a reward system. You'd be surprised what kinds of lessons sink in even at that age.

As for grandma, talk to her and see if she'd be willing to take the money she would spend on toys and put it toward a college saving or supplies you need like diapers if she wants something more immediate.

Answer 3

This article with headline "Too many toys are bad for children, study suggests" writes about this issue:

Researchers at the University of Toledo in Ohio, US, recruited 36 toddlers and invited them to play in a room for half an hour, with either four toys, or 16 toys.

They found that youngsters were far more creative when they had fewer toys to play with. They also played with each for twice as long, thinking up more uses for each toy and lengthening and expanding their games.

The authors conclude that parents, schools and nurseries should pack away most of their toys and just rotate a small number regularly, to encourage children to become more creative and improve their attention spans.

Maybe you could print out this article and give it to grandma and ask her to read it. This is probably best to do at some time other than when she just have given your daughter a toy.

Answer 4

I learned with my son that at this age they tend to lose interest quickly, even with new toys. You could try to explain this to your child’s grandma and say to her in a nice way that you really appreciate how much she adores her granddaughter, but that presence is more important than presents at this age.

I think all grandparents enjoy spoiling their grandchildren, so your request could fall on deaf ears. My sons grandparents never listened to me and I had oodles of toys just sat in a toy box that he hardly played with!

Answer 5

At your daughter's age, there is plenty of time to work it out. A one year old has no sense of possessions, they own the world. See how it goes.

As the child matures up to teenage, I wouldn't push back if the gifts are of modest value. That can easily be explained away as a Grandma's abundant love for them. Teachable opportunity for the child to be thankful. Send notes, drawings, and pictures to Grandma.

If Grandma wants to buy big ticket items for a teenager, time to push back.

If too many toys accumulate, donate to charity.

My children were my mother's first grandchildren and the number of presents was over the top. Sadly she passed away a few years later. Count you blessings and roll with it.

Answer 6

You're mashing together some different things: - too many toys - sugar/sweets - ipad/tablet.

Let's look at these independantly:

Sweets: too much sweets is certainly bad for anyone, especially a child. It's bad for their teeth, and the human metabolic response to sugar is like the response to an addictive drug. We didn't give our child sweets until he was old enough to ask for them and knew what he was missing (for us that happend around 2 and a half). Even now (at 4) we keep a close eye on the sweet consumption, but he has a reasonably healthy attitude to sweets.

I know some parents that kept the sweets away from their kids for a longer time, but I have the impression this leads to the children craving and fetishising the sweets as much as being too liberal with them. You gotta teach kids to eat sweets responsibly.

Tablets: The research indicates that tablets (and screen time in general) is bad for developing children. My wife is an educator and keeps up with the literature on this stuff. I'll try to follow up here with concrete references and professional guidelines, but googline "smartphones and baby development" will give a good indication of the current scientific consensus on the subject. You would do well to keep tables or smartphones out of the hands of your children, as well as keep them away from the television or streaming video or whatever for as long as you can.

Toys: I'm less aware of the scientific research on this subject, but the first noble truth of the Buddha is we are inherently unsatisfied. Give people more and they want more. This is especially true of babies, and if you keep giving kids gifts of rewards all the time, they will quickly normalize to this state, and get more demanding. I see this every Christmas: my kids, and the neighbors' too get a lot of special treatment over the christmas and they head down the spectrum towards spoiled bratty behavior. A few weeks later and they have headed back to their normal brattyness or spoiledness levels. I took my kid to Europapark in the days leading to Easter, and between that and Easter, I saw the same thing -- a reduced ability to cope with disappointment and less pleasure in the things that would normally make him happy. Pretty much human nature.

I had to give my mom strict rules about the sugar and handy stuff. As for the toys, my wife and I gently nudge the relatives to take it easy, and when things get too crowded we pass things on to needier children.

It's a hard topic, but I think you would be wise to chat it over with Grandma in a friendly way. If it's your wife's mother, you might be better off having your wife have the chat.

Answer 7

There are great answers about "is it bad?" but here is what we do since it seems we are a magnet to everybody's used toys around us. We keep only a few toys out in shelves (look up Montessori shelve for ideas), all the rest is stored. Once in a while, we would rotate the toys. Ask them (when older) which one should be stored and which one should be out. This keeps our place organized. Later, talk about which one should be given away to other kids.

Answer 8

A child of that age will not be able to handle that many toys all at once. You can however rotate the selection and put just 2 or 3 items in his/her play area.

I'm not yet a grandparent but I can image that Grandma wants to contribute and, possibly, the only way she can do that is by buying toys. Is it possible to let her help in other ways? As others have said, buying so many toys is pointless and a waste of effort.