Parents are Tired: Four Factors to Consider When Shopping for Kids
The other day I was checking e-mail on the couch and looked up to find my 7-year-old son in a full squat, grinning at me. Beneath him, a perfect pile of poop on our white carpet. We broke into a fit of giggles, which let’s face it, have been few and far between the last few years.
The fake poop was a recent birthday gift from one of my son’s fellow first graders and its genius has me rethinking gift buying for other people’s kids this holiday season. What if, instead of buying gifts that aspire to our highest parenting selves (Montessori style wooden toys, organic cotton everything, craft kits that take hours of focused attention), we buy gifts that reflect where we actually are as parents IRL. Almost three years into a life-altering pandemic—fake poop fits the bill—it makes us laugh, requires zero brain power, and easily fits into a drawer. Sold!
In this spirit, Work Life Everything offers up this gift-buying guide for kids to alleviate the mental load for their exhausted parents. We hope this might be useful to parents themselves, but perhaps most importantly, may be shared with well-intentioned friends and family, who may forget that we do not have unlimited closet space, nor 6 spare hours this weekend to learn how to grow crystals, crochet a hat, or program a robot.
1. Complexity of Assembly & Instructions
If understanding your gift’s instructions requires a parent to have had a full night’s sleep and a second cup of coffee, think twice. If the instructions are broken into multiple steps, and fold out into any kind of booklet, for the love of God, please put it down. If the gift requires a parent to create an account and sign-in to unlock key features—thereby creating yet another password they will have to store, but most likely forget—please, just say no. And if you are dead set on buying a child that new whizzbang electronic gizmo, I beg you, include a box of rechargeable batteries. Otherwise, you have just given your loved ones a frustrating search through their junk drawer(s) and ultimately, a trip to Target.
2. Parental Vigilance
Early in the pandemic I bought my ten-year-old daughter a candle making kit. This required me to melt hot wax over a stove and manage potent essential oils like “ocean breeze”, which proceeded to seep into every imaginable surface and had my kitchen smelling like a high school locker room. When we were finished, we were rewarded with an open flame burning in my daughter’s room. So many of the toys in my favorite crunchy educational toy stores follow a similar approach. These are adult science and art projects in which the child mostly passively observes, and on occasion, pours something into a measuring cup.
So yes, let’s avoid giving gifts that could injure the children or burn the house down. But let’s also avoid placing tired parents into the role of weekend teacher. They know best how to spend their limited quality time with their children, which might simply be vegging in front of their favorite Christmas movie with a hot chocolate.
Note: Know your audience! I do know a handful of parents who LOVE to do these projects with their children. However, I’ve found that most of these parents like to design their weekend projects themselves rather than have ideas foisted on them by well-intentioned relatives.
3. Decibel level
“And then all the noise. All the noise, noise, noise, NOISE! They'll bang on tong-tinglers, blow their foo-flounders, they'll crash on jang-jinglers, and bounce on boing-bounders!” I think the Grinch was onto something profound in his pursuit of a quiet and clutter-free Christmas.
My mother recently bought my children a yodeling pickle with no volume control. When outside, the pickle can be heard from across a full-sized soccer field. Inside, the decibel level will make your ears bleed. The pickle now happily resides at my mother’s house.
Another gift from my mother? A terrifying 4-foot dinosaur skeleton, that lets loose an earth-shattering roar, seemingly with no identifiable pattern or timing, except perhaps a sixth sense that a child is napping nearby.
My brother, a high school band teacher with an extreme tolerance for cacophony, once gave my daughter a light-up, musical Elsa dress. When she would spin in it (which was always), it would wail the Frozen song “Let It Go.” Because we needed to hear that song more time, obviously.
Please, listen to the sounds your gift idea makes. Can the sounds be turned on and off? Is there a dial for volume? If not, please, #putthetoydown.
4. Clean-Up & Storage
Before I was a parent myself, I sent my best friend’s children an inflatable 6x6 indoor ball pit, outfitted with 300 plastic balls. Best auntie ever! How fun am I, right?! A couple of years later, she took me into their living room to show me what she and her husband lovingly refer to as “the worst present ever.” Not only did the ball pit take up a fifth of her livable real estate, but they were in an endless battle to keep the plastic balls in the pit and out of their living room. Lesson learned.
This holiday season, avoid oddly shaped toys that cannot neatly fit in closets, toys that have many pieces, and large toys that take up limited square footage in our already crowded lives.
Aim for reasonably sized gifts that come with their own storage, preferably stackable, rectangular, or square boxes. When in doubt, ask yourself, would you be able to make room in your pantry or bedroom closet for this gift? If not, do the parents you love a favor, and skip the big, unwieldy gift.
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Grandparents and cool uncles and aunties everywhere are crying foul. Listen, I get it. It’s totally understandable that you want to be remembered for your big, loud, outrageous gifts. If your heart is set on something that would do poorly against the criteria above, perhaps go the extra mile and help with instructions and set-up, or, better yet, host the child with their new gift at your house for an afternoon playdate.
So, what toys make the short-list? Check out our “Best Gifts for Kids of Worn-Out Parents”.
Facts:
The mental load—it’s not a figment of your imagination. Click here to learn more.
Burnout is a psychological state 66% of working parents surveyed met the criteria for burnout, according to a 2022 study.
Despite massive changes in women’s workforce participation in the last fifty years, the late sociologist Suzanne Bianchi found that modern mothers spend even more time with their children than they did in 1965, sacrificing leisure time and sleep to do so.
Research shows that parents today spend far more time actively engaged in playing with their kids than our parents and grandparents did. Play can be an important learning and bonding opportunity! But don’t feel pressured to join the play when you’re feeling tired or have something urgent to attend to. Solo play is also an important developmental experience!
