This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 10:31 pm and is filed under Gift Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I was discussing gifts with my husband earlier on, and he was telling me when he was a child his grandmother would give them clothing for Christmas every year. Worst of all it was the same clothing every time. A knitted jumper always the same color (gray), a pair of socks and a pair of jocks. Not just any jocks, but grandpa’s jocks. Every year for as long as he could remember this was what he received.
That really got me thinking. Actually it really bugged me. It wasn’t just the thought of gray jumpers and grandpa’s jocks either! The thing that really annoyed me is the fact that children expect, and deserve something useful to them. Although clothing is useful when you are an adult, and a hand knitted jumper, made from the heart is a treasured possession from your grandmother. Because when you are an adult you see things through a different light. Gifts such as these are not considered to be useful when you are under 10.
I now know why my husband always insists on getting our children toys and things that they can play with. If you consider for a moment that children are not living in the same world as us- yet, for a few fleeting years they have been blessed with an amazing gift, the gift of freedom and imagination. They have one brief encounter of the way life was really intended to be. No stress, no bills to pay and no one else they must consider before themselves. Never again will they have the chance to think and experience life on this level.
It is so fleeting that if we as adults don’t help them enjoy it to the fullest it will damage their personality and tarnish their views on life as they grow. I believe in letting children be just that, children, for as long as they can be. Consider the world that we live in, that is soon to be a child’s reality. These are a very sad state of affairs, and why not postpone it for as long as we can.
Far too many parents impress on their children that they should “grow up” or ‘be’ more mature. Through the generations this is becoming a trend. Look at photo’s of when your parents were children, at two years old your parents were still considered babies, they acted and were dressed appropriately. They were still considered babies until they went to school. An adult was considered to be 21 years of age, not 18.
It is beyond me why we are in such a hurry to ‘grow’ our children and send them off into the adult world, before they have ever had the chance to be children. Giving gifts are no exception to this rule. When choosing a gift for a child, get them something they can play with, something that will entertain them, clothes aren’t appropriate gifts when you are a child, if you must give a child clothing, make sure that something entertaining is added to the gift.
