A fraction of a second is what it took my kids on the back seat of the car to tear open the neatly wrapped return gift and compare the shades. A minute is what it took them to start a fight over which one's was better. Five minutes is what it took them to come to an amicable conclusion. Ten minutes is what they spent playing with their respective gifts in the car. Twenty minutes later, by the time the car had been parked in front of our house, the toys lay half-broken, fully-forgotten on the car floor.
From what I could gather from the remains, each piece of what-was-junk-now looked terribly terribly expensive. A lot of thought must have, of course, gone into the careful selection of the return gift. For most of the birthday parties these days, it's the single biggest make-or-break measure of its success, so no parent wants to take a chance with it. But frankly, I don't think our children deserve to get anything more until we have succeeded in teaching them them to value what they already have.
And so, yet another birthday party, yet another mockery of the simple act of giving for pleasure...not that I have not been party to the crime in the past. I'm reminded of this mail I had sent out to a bunch of parents at the end of my son's 8th birthday party three years ago. Reproducing it here in the hope that my sentiments find resonance somewhere...
Hi all,
A big thankyou to all for having made Anav's 8th birthday
celebrations enjoyable and memorable. Given our packed and rushed days,
it's indeed an extra effort to fit in these frequent parties, so I was
overwhelmed by the manner in which you all went out of your ways to send
your kids over (or tried your best to make it possible); made for a
beautiful lifelong memory for Anav! For him, the excitement continued
well into late evening as he eagerly unwrapped his presents, squealed in
delight at each one of them, and then sat with his little sister
exploring/ playing with/ reading them all! Thanks again for the
absolutely lovely, thoughfully picked up stuff, every single one of
them.
I'm not sure why I'm sending this mail, but certain thoughts have been playing on my mind for a while, and I guess today's party gave me the necessary impetus to piece it together coherently. Having briefly interacted with you all on the phone adn in person, I feel confident that you are a bunch of parents who will appreciate my concern. Year after year, we see our kids getting loads of stuff at parties, both as birthday presents or as return gifts. While every item holds a special meaning for our kids, I feel uncomfortable by the way we are loading children, both ours and their friends, with more and more. Please dont get me wrong here, I am not the one to champion the cause of austerity, certainly not at birthdays! But what does bother me is the way we are aiding in our kids' increasingly failing to value things - far less than how we as kids used to feel about any new acquisition. We do it all the time - just look at the way our kids' rooms look these days, cupboards, cabinets, drawers, spilling over with stuff, and yet, our children never seem to feel it's enough. As parents, we perhaps will be guilty of bringing up the most matarialistic generation of kids the world has seen so far.
Since we'll continue to interact with one another the rest of the year, most certainly in the context of birthday
parties, I am taking the liberty of suggesting that we keep the
exchange of gifts and presents simple. There's very little that our kids
dont have these days. Can we at least aim to reach a situation (an
ideal one, in my view) where our kids get equally thrilled unwrapping a
small pencil box and a boardgame or a book. I have tremendous faith in
the openness with which our kids' minds work. I know they like simple
stuff as much as those terribly expensive and involved gadgets, but it's
unfortunate that we often feel hesitant, even embarrassed, buying the
not-so-expensive stuff for the birthday child.
I have been party to this crime year after year. Often, I've gone overboard with presents and with return gifts, though I must admit that it's always been out of an actual joy of picking up more and more of those cute little stuff for kids, and never due to the compulsion of having to compete with others. But I'm not sure how many of those things kids would have cherished beyond the initial few minutes of thrill. And so I felt that a beginning has to be made somewhere. As Anav's happened to be the first birthday in class, purely as a precedent, I'd thought of keeping everything really simple this time. So I picked up those sarangis from Delhi Haat as return gifts, at Rs35 per piece (bulk rate), and felt rather happy doing so. My kids have always enjoyed playing it, and i was reasonably confident that most of his friends would like it too (though not without annoying the parents with all that noise!). But moment I put them in each of the carry bags, I felt it wasnt 'enough', sadly, undoing the one step I had earnestly hoped to take this time. So a hurried last minute trip to the mall, and the bags got a little weightier with those tennis balls, drawing books and the chocolates. At Rs 100 per child, the bags looked slightly more 'acceptable' than before, though it was still far less than what my kids returns with from most of the birthday parties.
The party's over, the rooms have been cleared, and the birthday presents have been stacked in Anav's cupboard, some intact, some with contents already missing. But I've been feeling rather disappointed at having failed myself. Why couldnt i go ahead with my initial belief that the inexpensive, but incredibly delightful piece of instrument was all that the kids would go back with. Perhaps if the same item came for Rs200, I would not have had a moment of doubt.
As I said, I'm not sure why I'm writing to you all, but maybe, just maybe, it will help at least one parent not make the mistake I made this time. That, in itself, will be a BIG step.
Thanks again for having made Anav's party incredibly fun. The kids were great, and I look forward to seeing most of them again in the years to come!
Warm regards,
Richa
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