Family
May 4, 2024

What do you give to children who already have everything?

Once upon a time when giving was still helpful. Because the child was still small and had nothing at all. And so happy about everything. The game kitchen. The first doll. A box full of old Lego bricks. Better pins. Toy cars. A ball.

But now the nursery is full, the child goes to school, and from earlier remained only one: the faith and the expectation of the child that presents make happy. That presents are the best of Christmas. In different ways, the parents know and know the child that there is nothing better than to wish for something and then find it under the Christmas tree, or, in other words, to unpack something from which you can, until the moment, where the wrapping paper ends up in the parental area provided by the parents, it has not yet realized how much you want it.

The child is desperate because it has no wishes

But this year the child does not know what he wants, and the parents do not know what to give him, because "I already have everything," says the child. And it is right.

One could consider this as a welcome self-knowledge and as an invitation to teach the child modesty, renunciation and the benefits of lovingly packaged knit socks. If the child were not so desperate.

The child, eight, nine or ten years old, has arrived in the hell of late capitalism: the consumer needs nothing, but longs for the feeling of satisfaction that only arises when a need is fulfilled. The grown-ups have learned to invent their own needs in order to move from satisfaction to satisfaction: ah, a new iPhone, ah, a television with 20 cm more screen diagonal, ah, the new espresso machine, from which the coffee tastes better than out all other espresso machines before.

A "First World Problem"? Yes, but that does not help

Well, it does not help much as a parent to see that the child unconsciously only empathizes with what he has lived. It also does not help to see the whole thing as exquisite, as they say, "First World Problem", as a luxury crisis of a segment of the population that still has the freedom to fulfill wishes and even the children's desires. The child knows that there are children in Germany and perhaps even in their class, whose problem is not that they have no wishes, but that no one in the family has enough money to fulfill them. To the despair of the child, but to have everything, so there is still a latent bad social conscience, for which it may still be too small.

Let's stay with the facts. The amount of toys in the nursery is absurd. In fact, one could stop giving the child something to eat on the spot, and it would have enough in the closet until adolescence to deal with it. And like any other, this kid has a relatively long history and a whole fleet of former heartfelt wishes that never really ignited and that you're stumbling across in the basement: the longboard, the unicycle, the goddamn room trampoline.

The child has learned from what the parents already know: that one must not trust one's wishes. This time, it does not want to go wrong. Because it does not know what it wants to do, it deviates from imaginative wishes that are so unrealistic that it does not help anyone: the new iPhone, the kitten, the bow with real arrows.

Happiness and joy are used up

Until recently it was so easy. For a short period in the child's life, his wishes and the offer of the consumer society were absolutely congruent, the paradisiacal primal state of naked desire and warfare: "Lego Star Wars", "Lego Lord of the Rings", "Lego Friends", the horse world of Playmobil , Each new set was a wish fulfillment, demand and supply were a wonderful unit, and the parents just had to click, click - and the Christmas arbor was ready.

But after two or three Christmas and birthdays with these desire sources, the child realizes they have more of the stuff than they can play, and that the fourth or fifth set from a particular series of Legends never feels as good as the first or the second the second. The child realizes that happiness and joy wear off if they are not fed again and again from new, previously undiscovered sources. The child is, as I said, desperate.

So, parents start going crazy and helicopter-like to look for previously undiscovered needs that the child might still have. The euphemistic term for this is: research.Example sentence: You, I did some research in a few forums, about which nine year olds are happy, who really would like to have a real sword or a bow with sharp arrows or who used to play with Lego, but never with Playmobil. Another example sentence: I have once researched with Frank and Sonja, their children are already older, so what they were looking forward to when they were as old as ours.

We research what the child could wish for

This can actually lead to very good, in the sense of: practicable, results. But the likelihood is greater that you suddenly have a moment of self-realization: Wait, me, at the end of the day, over the laptop, the glass of red wine next to me, and for one and a half hours I research what my child could wish for it then deeply pleased about it, so in other words Christmas runs smoothly again?

It is a moment of shock. We are always complaining about how free and wild our childhood was, how long the leash our parents left us, and how well-planned and out-of-control childhood is today, and then we sift through customer comments in online department stores to ours To be able to implant child wishes, which we fulfill then? Close laptop, drink red wine: we went too far.

Then there is the temptation to realize yourself once again in the child: Would not it be the most wonderful thing to give the child what you liked to play at that age? Look, the "Playmobil Sheriff? S Office" from the anniversary edition, exactly the same thing I had then. Look, this very child sewing machine was my favorite when I was the same age as you.

Parents who surrender to this often advise against it in retrospect: it hurts self-love if the child is disturbed by what is itself the fondest memory of that age. And worse, the child may not burst into tears until the second holiday, and confess how shit it finds the chemistry kit, because it did not hurt the feelings of the father or mother.

No, we have to think of the mission from its end. Sober and pragmatic. The immediate goal is to survive Christmas (or even the birthday party) with as little collateral damage as possible. So the question is not what gifts make the happy child happy, but what gifts this missionary goal can achieve. You can break that down formulaically. There must be a larger main gift and several small or medium gifts. The main gift can be something lovingly cuddly sensible, which would have gotten anyway anyway sooner or later: the used bike, because it has grown out of his, the Ikea children's desk, because it needs anyway one.

No tears, nothing more, nothing less

The other gifts must come from four groups: first, from the random wish list the child wrote after the "Toggo" ad. Secondly, what all the other kids of all ages think is great, regardless of whether the child has shown any interest in it or not (information is available without further research needs the nearest toy store). Thirdly, something the child may discover for themselves in the next few days and weeks, but which one does not take too personally if the child is never interested: books, crafts, radio plays. And fourth, and that is by far the most important, most important group: something that the child can enjoy right away this evening and on these holidays. Emphasis on CAN: There will never be a guarantee.

But you get very close when you ask yourself in front of the laptop or in the store: Which game, which movie, which has just been released on DVD, which manual work with fast results would actually make me happy on the Christmas days, when I do it with the Child made together? With what can I infect the possibly indifferent child with my enthusiasm so that we can fill the hours after the mess and around the roast on the first holiday so that we all somehow become happy?

Maybe this is something as banal as the respective "Game of the Year" or even more loom bands with even more complicated instructions. No matter. Because the main thing is to remember the one thing that you can really find out and bring about: namely what you wish for Christmas. And that's just a good time. No tears. No more and no less.