No Crap for Christmas
Last December, after a run of less-than-magical Christmases — where we were either isolated, sick, or a miserable combination of both — I felt like I had to do something big for the kids to make up for it. Not that they felt this way, of course. They still got their LEGO sets and stockings full of candy canes and jokey toys, like a hamster you squeeze until one or both ends come popping out in a sick yet satisfying way. They were happy, even if I was stewing in my own mixture of guilt, disappointment, and woolly sweat from wearing a flannel nightgown way too many days in a row, year after year.
So I got them as much stuff on their lists as I could afford, leaning hard into the plastic, featured-on-an-Amazon catalogue stuff, assuming that more is more when it comes to kids and toys. It looked impressive waking up to a bunch of stuff under the tree.
For a brief, beautiful second, I felt like I had successfully washed away the bad vibes of the last three or so years as the kids shrieked and freaked and danced with the excitement of anticipation. And they were happy — for a minute.
After about three unwrapped gifts each, there was a point of gift blindness, where my kids’ “I can’t wait to see what this is” turned into “What’s next?” They were paying more attention to the quantity over the quality, no matter that they had actually asked for most of these gifts. There were diminishing returns over the next week, too, as most of that stuff got opened, briefly played with, and then discarded. Pointy, random LEGO pieces lay strewn all over the floor, eventually impaling everyone’s tender feet.
My husband had warned me this would happen, that “they’ll be overwhelmed with too much stuff.” When they’d unwrapped the last one, I thought, Never again.
That feeling of overwhelm-ness lasted well beyond the holidays. Like a lot of families I know, our house is full of plastic garbage that the kids begged and pleaded for, only to be played with a couple of times and then discarded readily. Paw Patrol figures and LOL dolls and all manner of gloopy, hypercolored slime that they seemingly couldn’t live without, abandoned and ignored every day.
But there are a few things that “Santa” brought last Christmas that survived the last 12 months: a play kitchen, a tent where they could have some quiet time with their plushies, a set of stepping stones, and giant blocks to build forts with. They loved the idea of having stuff they could use together, and it ended up being those very toys that have lasted, still getting prominent placement in the toy room and the highest level of usage among the discarded wasteland of plastic bits and bobs. The fact that they’re still playing with these a year later is the best possible review they could receive.
The real beauty is that these toys engage their imaginations, rather than obliterate their senses with beeps and bloops and overstimulation. They have to be present with each other, they have to be a part of the play, which means they play a lot more.
But it can be hard to suss out which toys will actually yield that special mix of “gets played with” and “keeps them engaged beyond Christmas,” especially when there is just so much stuff out there. So here’s what’s actually worked for my brood — giftable from baby to 10-year-old — in case you’re still in the throes of holiday-shopping hell.
There are entire Facebook and Reddit groups devoted to this play couch (some of them are even NSFW, but that’s another story), and as pricey as they are, it’s been worth it. All three of my kids — 7, 4, and 10 months — use the pieces as a couch, fort, and reading nook, and I have to admit that when the baby was less mobile, we used to plop him in the middle of the Chunk, using it as an ad hoc baby trap. Whatever does the trick!
If your home is anything like mine, the floor is always lava, and the only way to survive is to have something safe to step on to get across the room, any room. The older kids use them as lava avoiders, stacked up as a stool, which has actually become my 4-year-old daughter’s favorite seat. (She likes to sit on top of the entire stack and pretend to be “the teacher” and yell at the rest of us for being bad students. Can you tell she just started kindergarten?) The baby loves to beat on them like a drum set, hitting them with his squidgy fists and shrieking in delight. The set we have also comes with a balance board, which I use more than the kids and tell myself I’m doing core work for my abs while I rock on it and stare out into space.
I wish I’d bought one of these years ago, but if I start listing regrets now, I’ll never stop. Before the Pikler, my kids were climbing on every single surface available, leaping across tables like sugared-up frogs, bound to injure themselves again and again. My 10-month-old especially loves to climb everything, and it’s terrifying because he’s both good at it and, well, still a baby. This is a safe option that doesn’t involve me freaking out constantly (only occasionally). It also folds up so you don’t have to host a jungle gym in your apartment all the time.
My kids have so many stuffies, the origins of which I am mostly unsure of. Where did all of these soft, fluffy bunnies come from? And where are we supposed to keep them? In this tent, that’s where. Last Christmas, I forced my husband to set up this tent as soon as it was opened, and then I put all the stuffies inside, some cushions on the floor, and some pillows and blankets to round things out. When any of the kids start to get antsy, testy with siblings, or overstimulated, I tell them to go to the tent and chill out. And the stuffies, whoever they are, finally have a permanent home.
This year, my kids will be unwrapping fewer but more focused presents that I know will pass the play test and be something they’ll all use together across the years. Even the baby. And the best thing about this list is that these gifts encourage the kids to play with each other, with their friends, and also with us, together as a family. Because, ultimately, whatever our obsession with “magical childhood moments” actually means for millennial and younger parents, the truth is that all our kids really want from us is our attention and time. What’s better than that?