By Stephanie Holliday
WE now live in such a consumerist society, and it’s hard to navigate a world so concerned with the excessive accumulation of material goods, in particular as a parent.
Impending Christmases and birthdays can be enough to induce nausea when I peer inside our toy room, even after a good cull.
Children just naturally love toys, and the joy derived from a Christmas morning filled with squeals of delight as they open the items, that they told Santa in earnest they wished for, is one of the greatest experiences as a parent.
If it has reached a point however where the revolving door of never-ending stuff from grandparents, aunties and uncles, friends and other loved ones feels suffocating, it may be time to broach the subject of experiences over possessions. It can also feel a bit as though extended family are taking up your great gift ideas leaving you scrambling to find presents you know won’t be as well-loved.
The gift of a trip to the zoo or a day out at the movies with Nan can be the basis of fond memories that last a lifetime, long after the sound of a Frozen keyboard buried in a toybox that only goes off at 3am ceases and the pain of stepping on Lego wanes.
If you don’t feel like that’s something you can suggest, save those experiences for you to gift your child instead of even more toys. Make a ‘voucher’ book with different activities listed and get them to pick one every month or so throughout the year.
If you can broach it with others, you could even suggest a full term’s worth of an extra-curricular activity such as soccer. A win-win where a child is given the gift of being active, receiving an experience that lasts a few months and you win back the time you would’ve spent finding a spot for the toy that could’ve been added to the mountain.
If you are on the other side of the coin reading this, consider how the gift of an experience may be highly valued to your loved ones instead of another toy and how they’ll always cherish the memories of that day.
