The Grand Advantage, Part Two: The Spoiling

If I could assign my daughter to write her version of this story I candidly worry how it might go. She rarely complains out loud that I spoil her kids rotten and then leave her to deal with the unrealistic expectation that every day should be a party with presents. I'm sure there are times my indulgences are helpful - like my mom's were when my daughter was growing up. My mom could not be counted on to attend the school concerts but she was there to take them back-to-school shopping, and that was helpful because a free education is anything but free. And it probably is helpful for my daughter too when I offer, particularly at today's prices. I want to be present and able to do both the school events and the school shopping...

...and try not to overdo it or step on any toes. I mean, I haven't whisked them off to Disney World or anything, although I would like to do that...if circumstances were different.  But if we go somewhere locally - a museum, the oft-visited zoo, even just a bakery run - they rarely come back empty handed. I am not trying to buy their love; at least consciously. And I don't really think that I need to. But I am self-aware enough to know I am compensating for where I think I failed as a parent, and there is a large part of me that thinks I have been given not one, but two second chances. I bet my daughter knows that too, and maybe that's why she suffers - assuming she does actually suffer over this - in silence. Maybe her act of love towards me is to let me indulge her kids like there's no tomorrow.

I doubt in the age of two-income families that I am all that unique, both how tight things were for me as a parent, and how indulgent I tend to be now.  Long story short, we got married probably before we should have. We had no money, were definitely too immature to be an independent adult couple, and also too immature to know it. I was SO immature I thought I knew everything about living independently because I had been out of my parent's house for five whole years, like that was such a lifetime (insert eyeroll here). Then, before our first anniversary I was pregnant.  Definitely too young, dumb and poor for that looming responsibility, that's for damn sure. But, there I was: faced with a young family and very modest means.  When my oldest was facing her first Christmas we had no money to buy her gifts, but I had a Sears credit card so we went down to the old outdoor mall Hancock Center (any Austinites remember that place?) and scoured through the whole two aisles of toys for anything we could buy for an infant girl.  The thing I remember specifically getting, both because it definitely didn't fit the "infant" appropriate genre and because it ended up being well loved and well used by both girls well into their late teens, was a Cinderella cloth tote. I have no idea how long it took me to pay down the credit card, but probably a long time. And would my daughter have realized if she did or didn't get any gifts on that particular day from her mom and dad?  Doubtful. But I would have, and that feeling sticks with you. You want to give your kids everything. Few of us actually can.

I'm not saying I can give the grands everything in compensation for those lean years now, but I am no longer in a place where I'm worried about paying the utilities and buying groceries (although I complain mightily about the costs of both), so I have a little more leeway than I did when my kids were young, and I'm also at a point in my life that if I want to spend my money on my grandchildren and my dogs, then that's up to me. In short, I'm at the point where I have a bit of an attitude and don't want to be told what to do (some might say that's nothing new).

Christmas is the ultimate litmus test if grandparents have created little monsters, and I had a bit of a worry that I had last year when they tore through everything I had spent months curating and then were genuinely disappointed there wasn't more. I think their reaction isn't just about me though: Christmas is just over-commercialized in general. The "spirit" of the season - no matter what religion you may subscribe to - has been supplanted by Black Friday sales that now start in October. I've been bombarded with nothing but Christmas ads since before Halloween...kids see all that too and who can blame them? A lot of it is designed specifically to whip us all into a frenzy of desire. Objective met.

I've been pondering all this as I look at the stash of presents I've been gathering for months and trying to contemplate if it's enough. I sometimes literally feel the push and pull of emotions like a physical tug: one part of me saying, "it should be, and you can't afford much more" and another part of me saying, "they'll be disappointed with only this much. You need to find more."

It's a genuine conundrum. Of course, the obvious answer is to spend time with them just enjoying the season. Easier said than done with the mother-in-law in residence and work...always the Christmas challenge: regular life doesn't stop for the holidays, expectations just pile on. But that's a worry for another post. The point to this one: many of us spoil our grands. I think the motives of many aren't that far off from mine. Do we go too far?  Or is it a rite we earned?

Discuss.