Dear Care and Feeding,
I feel super guilty and am struggling to deal with buying gifts for two daughters who have wildly different wants. My older daughter (17) is super outgoing, loves makeup and skincare products, practically lives in athleisure, and enjoys the outdoors. My younger daughter (12) is more introverted, hates any clothes that aren’t some shade of black or navy, is super artsy and absolutely uninterested in anything “basic” or “trendy,” and would rather clean the garage than go for a hike. The kids get along fairly well (they are not best friends but rarely fight and are generally super supportive of each other), but their polar opposite personalities and interests make it a nightmare to give gifts equally.
Every Christmas, our older daughter will create an organized spreadsheet of everything from items that work as stocking stuffers to specific camera accessories, complete with links and sorted from most to least affordable, with information about why she could use each gift. I will buy a few presents off of it at Christmas, then save it to find gifts for her birthday and Easter as well. On the other hand, we practically have to beg our younger daughter to give us any indication of what she wants. She is at once very picky and loath to replace the ancient pastels and pencils she has “worn down until they’re perfect,” making it much harder to shop for her. Last Christmas, I sent her pictures of dozens of potential gifts and asked if she wanted any of them—she insisted that all she wanted were some socks and one pair of sneakers.
My husband and I thought it would be wrong to get one kid Uggs, Lululemon, and makeup while only giving the other one socks and sneakers. It would feel as though we were being unfair, especially because we budgeted enough to comfortably splurge on both of them. We ended up also getting our younger daughter a bunch of graphic novels and a subscription for a monthly snack box, but her gifts still cost quite a bit less than her sibling’s. I’m worried that she’ll look back in later years and feel as though her sister was favored over her because they received different amounts of presents, and I want to know if I could have handled this better. What should I do when their birthdays come around and I face total opposite gift requests?