What to Get the Adults in Your Life Caring for Young Children
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There is such a tragic gulf between the concept and the reality of exchanging gifts. Conceptually, gift exchanges are a gleaming pinnacle of the human experience: a way to show your loved ones that they’re cared for and, maybe even more importantly, known. Have you ever read The Gift, by Lewis Hyde? It concerns, among other things, how exchanging gifts is a sacred human universal, a habit that holds groups together. One of the book’s best-known passages describes how the people of the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea traditionally passed bracelets along through their communities, and these bracelets, called Kula rings, developed into politically critical conduits of trust and belonging. Weirdly, these transcendent feelings don’t reveal themselves to me when I’m scrolling the L.L.Bean “sale” tab in bed at 11 p.m., furrowing my brows to previously unseen depths while parsing what I can afford to buy for my in-laws that they would actually enjoy.
Maybe it’s because I have excessive reverence for the theory of gifts that I choke when it comes to the practice. The only high-vibed gift-giving, in my opinion, is spontaneous, not occasion-based. “I saw this and it made me think of you and I knew you had to have it.” That, to me, is what gift-giving should be all about. Alas, it’s the holidays, and gift-giving is compulsory. Fine: Let’s do this.
These are all gifts meant for adults — gender is neutral — who are caring for young children. This is a population with very specific needs that are sometimes overlooked. They are home a lot, and they’re tired a lot. Maybe they need a bit of mothering. The gifts I’ve listed here are all things I would have loved to receive during my first few years as a parent, and some are gifts I did receive and still love. If you’ve already done your shopping but like these ideas, you can return to this guide whenever you want to pamper the parents of young children in your life. None of these are products that will cease to be for sale in the next 12 months, unless some truly weird stuff happens to the global economy, which is actually plausible. Fingers crossed!
A parenting book that will mellow you out
My favorite parenting guide is Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki. I have given this book to many, many people. I went looking for my copy and it appears I gave it away, too. This book is an introduction to Zen Buddhist practice, but you don’t have to read it that way. What you’ll find in this beautifully short volume (that you can open to any page and read for ten minutes before falling asleep) is that Zen Buddhism and caregiving have a lot in common. They are repetitive, and the rewards come slowly, and you have to refine your focus and attentiveness in order to notice them at all. New parents are beginners. Suzuki writes, “When we have no thought of achievement, no thought of self, we are true beginners. The beginner’s mind is the mind of compassion. When our mind is compassionate, it is boundless.” Hell yeah.
Weed gummies that will also mellow you out
Many of the cool new parents I know swear by Delights, gummies that carry the additional imprimatur of having collaborated with the Poog podcast (the collab is out of stock, but the rest of its line is just as good). The product is as refined as the packaging. Weed was not legalized when I had young children, so the market had not begun to innovate the way it now has. I really feel like I missed out on integrating microdosing into my caregiving practice. Don’t let your friends make the same mistake.
Sheets that won’t remind you that you’re exhausted
Dingy sheets are depressing, and new parents’ beds are the most important piece of furniture in the house. Once you’ve had children, white sheets should be considered a thing of the past. Don’t subject yourself to the challenge of keeping them white — switch to patterns or interesting colors. Here are two that I like: L.L.Bean, Anthropologie.
A meaningfully eccentric piece of jewelry
Lockets are chicly anachronistic because we’re so steeped in photographs that no one wears them around their necks anymore. I propose we return to the pre-photography era of lockets as reliquaries: a place to keep a coil of your baby’s hair or even (hear me out) baby teeth. There are many affordable options on Etsy, and if you’re rich, there’s Erie Basin. I am insisting that these are gender-neutral. A man in a locket? Showstopper.
An enhancement for your private catharsis pod
The car becomes a time-travel portal during the years that you’re caring for young children. With the kids sleeping in the back seats and the right music playing, you can be 20 again, having a nice cathartic cry to an old playlist. Your sacred wormhole to the past may be strewn with spent snack pouches, but at least you can make it smell good. For those aspiring to seem put-together, there are car fragrances from Jo Malone (the diffusers themselves are sold separately from the fragrance, which seems dumb, but whatever), and for those aspiring to seem cool, there’s D.S. and Durga.
The original and best literacy aid for children
One of the latest marquee parenting worries concerns how to make sure your children will grow up to be readers. This worry is actually kind of legitimate, since most of us do a lot of reading while staring at our phones, which sends mixed signals to young children about phones in general. How to proceed? Here is a suggestion that is both a “parenting hack” (ew) and also a really nice gift: a weekend-only subscription to a print newspaper or magazine. No one wants all that newsprint accumulating throughout the week, but having a print paper lying around on the weekend invites leisure, even if little children are in your midst. Print magazines are how I became a reader — New Yorker cartoons! Ad copy! Kids love to decipher the Approval Matrix! My recommendations: a weekend subscription to the Financial Times (a European perspective? There’s never been a better time for it, and its Saturday magazine is excellent) or, naturally, a biweekly home delivery of New York — and access to everything online. (We’ve got a holiday sale going: Subscribe now and save over 40% plus get a limited-edition tote with any annual plan.)
A small beautiful Swedish oil lamp for homebound evenings
When you’re home with your kids and it’s dark at 4:30 p.m., good lighting becomes a matter of psychological necessity. Everyone loves candles, and there are evermore cool options to choose from, but I remain an oil-lamp partisan. Unlike candles, oil lamps last forever, and they don’t make a mess. The classiest ones are on the smaller side — Sweden really knows what it’s doing in this department. Here’s my favorite.
Stainless-steel kitchen tongs that you can bequeath to your children
I’m sure you’ve heard that we’re not supposed to use black plastic kitchen equipment anymore because they’re sweating toxins into our food. I was unperturbed when this news broke, because ever since 2003, when I worked as a line cook in New Orleans, I have been using the same pair of stainless-steel tongs that are made in Vermont by a kitchen-supply company called Edlund. These tongs will outlive me. They are so sturdy that I’m able to use them with dexterity that accurately mimics my fingers. Ask anyone who works in a kitchen: Tongs are all you really need. Get your Edlund tongs here.
Indoor bulbs that bloom in winter
Caregivers deserve to be surrounded by beauty at all times, but at the very least, they should have flowers to admire year-round. Last year, I bought a bunch of wax-dipped amaryllis bulbs and gave them as gifts, and everyone loved them. You don’t have to water them; they will grow and bloom in the dead of winter with nothing but indirect light to feed them. For someone who might be able to handle the occasional watering duty, you could splurge and get them a glazed pot of paperwhites from White Flower Farm. Winter bulbs are the classiest gift I can possibly think of.