Poll: Buying gifts for your nieces and nephews

[dulcemariamar]

Do you always buy gifts for your nieces and nephews at Christmas and for their birthdays?

If you are not close to your brother/sister/BIL/MIL does this influence if or how much you spend on their gifts?

If you are not close to the parents of your nieces/nephews would you be upset if they didnt buy a gift for your LO?


I am just curious to see how other people handle gift giving in their family. I have 2 nieces on my DH's side of the family. We see them 3-4 times a year and we are not close with the parents and with one set of parents we actually dont get along with them. We buy gifts at Christmas and if we get invited to a birthday party but we dont spend a lot of money.

If you are not close to the parents or to the kids, do you think there is an acceptable point when you can stop giving gifts?

Do you think the idea of Secret Santa would be okay in this situation and say that the toy is from all the aunts and uncles?

[Willis Jackson]

All the kids get a $50 check for their birthdays and a $25 gift for Christmas.

[anna7602]

I was close with my nieces and nephews while they were growing up (the youngest are 18 now), so I always gave them gifts. Now that they are all adults, what I spend on each individually is more a function of the personal relationship I have with them. But when they were younger, I tried to be fair in spending a similar amount on all of them.

I stopped giving one niece gifts when she stopped answering emails and generally distanced herself from the family after going off to college. I haven't seen her at all since DD was born. It makes me really sad that she has been too busy to meet her youngest cousin and I guess that was the final point at which I decided it was pointless to keep trying to stay in touch with her.

DH's sister never gives DD any gifts. I don't care about the gifts, but it does piss me off when we come to town and she doesn't make any effort to see us or DD (she lives in the same town as DH's parents and we usually visit twice/year).

So, it all depends on the family dynamic. A Secret Santa may be okay in your situation. It would have been really weird in my family.

[6fsn]

I'm close to my nieces and nephew so I do get them gifts for bday ($20) and Christmas ($35). They'll probably get cut off from bdays when they turn 18.

My DH's brother and step sister give Christmas to our kids, but not bday. I don't care.

[mollybrown]

I only have one niece, and I spend around $50 for birthdays and Christmas.

I don't like the idea of secret Santa or joint gifts for young kids unless there are dozens of them and it's cost prohibitive to buy them each a gift. My best gifts came from aunts, uncles, and godparents, so I would have felt cheated as a kid. Ill probably spend more when niece is older to get her really cool gifts. Of course it's easy to do when you only have 1...

I would be upset if my children didn't get gifts from their aunt and uncle. IMO, aunts and uncles buy gifts, regardless of how they feel about the parents. At least while the kids are minors.

[justjen]

We only have 3. One is 6, the other 2 are 3. We buy them all gifts.

[ssmjlm]

We do $20 for both birthdays and christmas. We aren't close to BIL and SIL so we never know what to buy them, so we're stuck giving cash or a gc. I usually bump the amount to $50 for 16th birthdays and graduation.

We have 1 niece, 1 nephew and 3 step nephews. Unfortunately SIL never felt the need to integrate her children into BIL's family and sort of "drew a line" in regards to their involvement early on, but we're still expected to give them something. So after many years of trying to either give gifts or budget and give $50 each, we were just looked at as ATMs, we've just decided $20/each cash and have to leave it at that. In fact last year we only gave $20/each and SIL put something on FB about our decreased amount.

I have no idea what they'll do once we have a kid, I have a feeling that they'll never monetarily match what we've spent. They don't even give good adult gifts.

It's a very sad situation. I hope that BIL one day grows the strength to leave SIL and get out of the bad marriage.

[Deleted]

I have 1 niece that just turned 1. I send her stuff. I have another niece due in Feb & will send her stuff too. I will rarely see them.

[bananapancakes]

I have two nieces and two nephews. I have always lived relatively far away from them (in a different province, then on a different continent, and now much closer but still a three hour drive) but I always, always, always see them when I am in town and now that we live closer I am always there for birthdays/baptisms/soccer tournaments and the like. My brothers and I were not super close before they had kids but are much closer now because of the kids. My H would say I spend way too much on them for birthdays and Christmas. I probably spend about $100-$200 for each kid for birthdays and the same for Christmas. I also buy gifts randomly throughout the year (like my 2 year old niece is newly potty trained so when I visited for Thanksgiving last weekend I bought her a whole bunch of Dora underwear).

We don't have kids of our own though and there are no nieces/nephews on my H's side. We also don't exchange birthday/Christmas gifts with my brothers and their wives. We only buy for the kids.

[anna7602]

Oct 14, 2012 15:44:20 GMT -5 ssmjlm said:

In fact last year we only gave $20/each and SIL put something on FB about our decreased amount.

Wow, how very super tacky, ungrateful and downright bitchy of your SIL to do.

[ssmjlm]

Oct 14, 2012 15:52:23 GMT -5 anna7602 said:

Oct 14, 2012 15:44:20 GMT -5 ssmjlm said:

In fact last year we only gave $20/each and SIL put something on FB about our decreased amount.

Wow, how very super tacky, ungrateful and downright bitchy of your SIL to do.

Yeah it was pretty hurtful what she wrote it was something about "Only someone who isn't a mother would hurt children...", then BIL found out and made her take it down, but not before I saw it. I was also pissed b/c we didn't get to see the kids, so we gave BIL and SIL the cards with the cash and I stupidly didn't seal the cards, so she rifled through them beforehand to see what we gave.

Sadly we've discussed doing $20 to all the kids via BIL and then DH works with BIL's ex and coordinating a tangible gift with her separate this year, things like nephew always wants a new pair of skate shoes. I feel like they're punished b/c everyone is stretched thin with the 5 kids total and while SIL's kid's other families spoil them, BIL's ex doesn't even have any family, so we're it.

It's a horrible situation all around with a lot of drama.

[rootbeerfloat]

I have a 9 y/o niece and 5 y/o nephew. We are close to both of them (especially my nephew) and buy gifts for both them.

[cvillern]

Well my 15 year old niece lives with me so I treat her like my own. I do buy small presents for her 4 year old sister at birthdays and Christmas. If we had a ton if nieces and nephews we would probably just do 25 bucks a holiday.

[Becca]

I only have 1 niece. We generally spend $50 for birthday and $50 for Christmas.

We are not close to her family at all, though I wish we were (she is likely my DD's only cousin ever). We invited niece to all of DD's birthday parties, and they never come.

They invited us to her 3 yo, 4yo and 5 yo parties, but we weren't invited to celebrate at this year's 6 yo party. (though I know they had a family party thanks to FB)

They have never bought DD anything for her birthday, so we didn't do a gift this year when we weren't invited to the party (though I feel guilty about that now).

Not sure what we'll do for Christmas.

[pugz]

we are relatively close to all of our siblings and see them once or twice a year. We have 9 nieces and nephews. Birthdays they get $20 cash, Christmas we allocate $20-25 per kid.

[savannah11]

I still do birthdays. There are a lot (11!) so the gifts are $20 or under.

We draw names at Christmas for DH's side of the family so we only have to buy for 2. I also buy for my brother's 3 kids so that's 5 gifts total.

ETA: I think a lot about when we should stop buying for birthdays. DH's siblings keep multiplying so the number will keep going up. Almost every month there is a gift to buy. We don't live near any of them so we have to ship everything. Also, as they get older I find myself unable to pick out a gift. I sent gift cards to the oldest two this year which is kind of lame.

Honestly, the only thing that has prevented me from stopping is my kids. They love getting gifts from their cousins. While I never expect anyone to send a birthday gift, I would imagine that would for sure stop if we stop reciprocating.

[imimahoney]

I have one niece ( 3) and one nephew (7 months) and yes I always buy them gifts for their birthday (soon to be) and Chanukah.

They are my sister's kids and we are very close and celebrate their birthdays as a family and we get together for Chanukah so it would be super weird and a bit awkward if we didn't go gifts.

When they get older then maybe we won't do gifts but now that they are young they certainly get fun presents.

[chessie]

I have 4 nieces, normally we spend anywhere from 50-100 on bdays and less around xmas since its all at once. But we only buy for the kids though, so we try to go all out and put extra money in a card for their 529's. Not close with any of our siblings, but we make an effort for the kids at least.

[Deleted]

We've got 4, all on my side. I try to send something, but honestly I know my brother's kids have more toys than they know how to play with so sometimes I don't. My sister's are in Australia, so I send something random and small.

[hopeful2012]

We only have 1 niece and 1 nephew. We buy them gifts for Christmas and for birthdays.

I'm one of 13 cousins, DH is one of 17 cousins, growing up our families both did a grab-bag so that each kid would have someone assigned to buy their present(s) at set $ amount. Since DH still has younger cousins, we still participate in the grab bag but only as the buyers of presents (so everyone under 18 gets a present, everyone older than 18 buys one, with some people over 18 buying more than one by the volunteer system).

We do still buy DH's cousins (under 18) birthday presents but they are smaller than the gifts we buy for our niece and nephew.

[lindyanne]

DH is not close at all with nieces and nephews on his side and no one exchanges gifts. I have two (soon to be three) nephews. They get a $20-$30 gift plus $20 cash to save for bdays. I normally spend $75 for Christmas but I have a small family and like to go overboard.

[h]

We have five nieces and nephews so far and do Christmas and b-day gifts for all of them in the $20-30 range. My kids get Christmas and b-day gifts from all their aunts and uncles.

[Deleted]

We have 12 nieces and nephews, all on H's side. We are close with all of them and buy them all birthday gifts, usually around $30 each. Though I just mailed out 5 birthday cards with $30 checks on Saturday for all of the Sept/Oct birthdays since DD was born in Sept and life got in the way.

In the past, we have bought gifts for all of the kids at Christmas, and tried to keep it around $30 each, but if we saw something that we thought a certain kid would like that was over/under $30, we bought it for him/her. We are the only aunt/uncle that buys gifts for all the kids...they all do a Secret Santa with books only. Now that we have a kid, we will probably phase out the major gift giving and join the Secret Santa. DH will likely feel guilty about this and want to buy everyone gifts at the last minute.

[definitelyO]

I have a 10yr old niece and 11 yr old nephew - they live across the country from us and we maybe see them once a year. I'm not all that close with my brother - but no fault of his kids. I spend ~ $75 each for their birthdays and close to $100 each on Christmas. it's all in what you can afford. I 'think" they spend about $30 on DS and you know what? I don't care. it's not about equality - it's the thought and they do put a lot of thought into DS's gifts and he loves them. I would NEVER say anything about how much someone spent on a gift.

[lmb5109]

We are both very close to our siblings, nieces, and nephews but there's 8 of them and we're not rich. So everyone gets $30 for their birthday and $30-$50 for Christmas (depends on how much $ we were able to save during the year for Christmas.

My siblings and I were not close to my dad's brother. I think he stopped giving us gifts when we got into high school.

[nonsenseabound]

We have a niece and nephew on dh's side and a niece on mine. We spend the same on my niece as we do on dh's niece/nephew for bdays and Christmas but mostly because my sister has no money and the kiddo would go without a lot. We make sure she is keeping up with basics.