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let 5-year old girl choose a gift for herself ?



 
 
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  #1  
Old August 17th 04, 05:22 PM
Yakov Lerner
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Default let 5-year old girl choose a gift for herself ?

My 5-year old daughter will have birthday soon. I thought maybe I'd
take her to the shopping mall to let her choose the gift for herself,
maybe she'll want something completely different than another standard
doll that I might choose myself for her. But I have my doubts.

I have doubts about taking her to the mall because I'm afraid she'll
become spoiled, "consumeristic" and will demand more purchases.

She loves very much to pick and select things for herself, but so far
we bought together only small things like snacks and color pens.

What do you think about idea to take her with me to let her select for
herself the more expensive gift for her 5th birthday, under my
guidance in the mall ?

YL
  #2  
Old August 17th 04, 05:42 PM
Joseph
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Indulging a child within your means is fine and dandy. It is when kids are
constantly repressed in the material realm relative to those around them
that they tend to turn out materialistic. Refer to the African Americans in
various innercity ghettos who have such strong superficial desires (you see
some of them making it in the rap game, thinking all their problems are
finally solved).


  #3  
Old August 17th 04, 05:51 PM
Nikki
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Yakov Lerner wrote:
My 5-year old daughter will have birthday soon. I thought maybe I'd
take her to the shopping mall to let her choose the gift for herself,


I think the theory is great and I would do that for things like clothes, or
other items but I'd get the birthday gift just because I think half the fun
is getting a surprise gift to open up :-)

If you are worried about getting something she might not like just take her
window shopping. Browse around the aisles and see what she likes best then
go select one of those things later.

You could also start giving her an allowance. If she chooses to save part
of it you can match that amount for savings. I think I might start doing
something like that for my 5yo. I want him to learn to save money for
larger purchases (I don't really care what they are) but I don't think it
does much good to *force* them to save. So I'll encourage his savings by
matching the money. He can buy any thing he wants with the saved money but
it will be a good learning experience for him to choose carefully with the
money he saved - if he chooses to save any, which he might not. He's only
5. Candy and dollar store toys are pretty awesome!

--
Nikki


  #4  
Old August 17th 04, 06:11 PM
Banty
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In article , Yakov Lerner
says...

My 5-year old daughter will have birthday soon. I thought maybe I'd
take her to the shopping mall to let her choose the gift for herself,
maybe she'll want something completely different than another standard
doll that I might choose myself for her. But I have my doubts.

I have doubts about taking her to the mall because I'm afraid she'll
become spoiled, "consumeristic" and will demand more purchases.

She loves very much to pick and select things for herself, but so far
we bought together only small things like snacks and color pens.

What do you think about idea to take her with me to let her select for
herself the more expensive gift for her 5th birthday, under my
guidance in the mall ?


My son hates surprises, and also started making specific requests, and really
meaning them consistenty over time. So at about 8 I started going
present-shopping with him. It turned out better than I would have thought.
For one thing, from the first I would make clear to him that he would not
actually receive the present until his birthday (or, later, even Christmas). He
actually would look at the present in anticipation, and be much more excited
about it than if it were a surprise. And would not open it until the
agreed-upon time.

The other good effect it had was that he would see the prices and we'd talk
about tradoffs.

This is really specific to my son's particular personality; for a lot of kids it
probably wouldn't work that well, and I surely didn't think of this as a nifty
parenting idea at first ;-)

So I'm one data point for doing things that way.

Cheers,
Banty

  #5  
Old August 18th 04, 06:56 PM
Karen
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I think this can be a great idea, especially if you set up some
parameters, which can be expanded as she gets older. We did something
like this with my ds for his 4th bday this year. We still surprised him
with a gift form us and a gift from baby, but we also gave him some money.

My mom was in town and there was a specific product she wanted and I
found a craft store which carried it, so we were taking a special trip
to this one particular store. I looked them up on the internet and saw
that they specialized in rubber stamps and stickers, two things ds is
crazy about right now. So in the car on the way to the store, we gave
him a little card with $10 so he could choose some items for himself for
his bday. While I helped my mom get her thing, ds went around with dh.
We showed him how to look all around at everything they had, then how to
narrow down his choices (such as deciding that with his amount of money
he could get one nice stamp and some stickers). They chose the stamp,
then counted down how much money would be left as they chose stickers.
He kept the bit of change to put in his piggy bank. This all went very
well, and ds was very pleased with his purchases and proud of himself.

So I would recommend choosing a category of thing to shop for and
choosing one or two stores to shop in, have this all decided beforehand,
otherwise random shopping in a huge mall with endless choices could be a
bit overwhelming. If you want to give her more choice of thing, maybe a
few days beforehand, say you'd like her to choose whether she wants a
doll or a game (whatever), then you figure out the best place to shop
for that item and keep her focused on the decision she already made and
how much she has to spend and help her find the things in that price
range to choose amongst.

-Karen, mom to Henry 4 and William 4 months-

 




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