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rude or not: dictating gifts for children?
FI's family annoys me. in particular, they have a way of sucking the joy out of christmas. specifically, there are a few of them that like to dictate gifts for their children. so what i mean is that they say, get this, or don't get that, or don't buy my kid anything, or that's too big, or run your gifts by me first to make sure "santa" hasn't already bought it.
my thinking is this: i enjoy giving gifts. gifts are a treat. there shouldn't be so many rules around gift-giving. i think you should be appreciative that people want to buy your kids presents and just accept them graciously, as you would any other gift. i don't think you should dictate what others can buy.
but i don't have kids so i recognize that there's another perspective out there that i don't have.
so is this rude or do i just need to get over it?
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Re: rude or not: dictating gifts for children?
If you're asking them, I don't really think it's that rude as they're just replying to your question.
If they ask "When are you going Christmas shopping for my kids?" then it's rude.
I would never me ungracious to a gift giver, but if you ask, you're opening yourself up to that response.
Those who are addressing presents unsolicited are the ones who are being rude. You should never ever expect gifts ever... so.... they're just being butts.
I see both sides of the coin here (with respect to solicited suggestions only)... As someone purchasing a gift, it becomes stressful when there are too many restrictions/requirements dictated. As a parent answering the question "What does DS want for Christmas this year?" to a lot of different people, I totally get why they might be specific. I try to keep it as open as possible (ie "DS likes construction things", or "A few puzzles might be nice"), but they may be trying to avoid getting duplicate gifts (because honestly exchanging gifts is a PITA, as is explaining to your wailing 3 year old why he can't have both Black and Decker toolbelts Christmas morning).
At times I wish FI's mother would run things by us before she gets them. We have a small apartment here, and she always buys him the largest things she can find. It's very sweet of her, and we're always gracious about it, but it's a pain to try to find room to store everything.
*edited for grammar
I think that general ideas on types of toys, characters, themes, and activities, and some general toy suggestions (she's been asking about this Barbie and THATdress up clothes kit) are good ways start people off but that dictating specific toys ("I want you to get her a Lego set W" or "Hmm, how about you get her the Cinderella dress up outfit from the disney store") is overstepping boundaries.
Only 13 days!
I told the mother what I got her daughter and she laughed and said that she guessed she had that coming. Apparently everyone ended buying the daughter messy or noisy gifts. Lol. That is kind of what we do in our group. You just have to know the individual you're messing with. Also her daughter will get to play with it. Her mom might not like it but she wouldn't deny the kid something someone bought her.
My parents once had to return a gift that was given to my brother for his birthday, because it broke their "no toy weapons" rule. It was awkward and unpleasant, and while the gift-givers did understand the reasoning behind the rule, it would just have saved a lot of trouble for everyone if my folks had said up front "please don't buy our children toy weapons".
Because of that, whenever I have to buy gifts for kids, I ask their parents "are there any things your kids aren't allowed to have?" and it has mostly served me well. If the parents have a rule on something, I don't want to make it a big deal out of it by giving the kids something that breaks that rule. I also understand parents saying "no noisy toys please". There are plenty of reasons, quite aside from the parents' sanity, why they might not want noisy toys.
As for "run your gifts by me", I understand that too. That's usually so they don't end up with duplicates. There are some things where duplicates are great (like Lego, you can never have too much Lego), but getting two copies of the same book or two of the same shirts etc is not so much fun. We've just had this exact problem with out Christmas gifts for the adults in the family (FMIL bought FSIL a steamer on promotion earlier in the year to put away for Christmas, then the mom of the kids that FSIL has been tutoring/au-pairing for the last 3 years gave her a steamer as her farewell present. FSIL bought us a snack stand, but my dad got us exactly the same one a week earlier.)
However, I do think it's rude for parents to say "buy this exact toy" as opposed to "we love this kind of thing". Wish lists (and wedding registries) are one thing, but it's pretty rude for ANYONE to say "you must buy me exactly this and nothing else".