Friday dilemma: How to deal with bad presents?

Pisces says:

11:33am | 18/01/13

She could always tell her mum that she just doesn’t like it and suggest that mum hangs it up on her wall so she can appreciate her artistic talents each time she looks at it.

Mum sounds like an emotionally domineering clown who just needs to hear the word “no” occasionally.

I wonder what does mum does with her unwanted gifts…mmmh!

AdamC says:

12:53pm | 18/01/13

Pisces, that seems like a pretty tactless and hurtful approach.

I think Kat has it right. Though I would only put the thing on display when my mum came over, and keep it in a draw at other times.

Pisces says:

11:40am | 18/01/13

Your last sentence saved you from a severe tongue-lashing. Love it ????

Bitten says:

01:55pm | 18/01/13

But, then, if it was me I’d just throw it in the bin; life is too short for cheap wine and bad art… 

Booyah.

k.marshall says:

11:50am | 18/01/13

You wouldn’t say that if you had my mother

Bertrand says:

12:57pm | 18/01/13

At Christmas my children receive far more toys than they could ever need or that we have room to keep.

We tend to keep in their boxesabout 80% of the gifts they receive from friends and family and donate them to places like domestic violence refuges and foster care organisations.

I don’t feel bad about this because every year we tell people not to buy gifts and every year they do anyway.

Bertrand says:

12:57pm | 18/01/13

At Christmas my children receive far more toys than they could ever need or that we have room to keep.

We tend to keep in their boxesabout 80% of the gifts they receive from friends and family and donate them to places like domestic violence refuges and foster care organisations.

I don’t feel bad about this because every year we tell people not to buy gifts and every year they do anyway.

che says:

11:56am | 18/01/13

Spot on, who cares how good it is, it’s hand made by your loved one. That’s the thought the counts!

sunny says:

04:24pm | 18/01/13

That’s what I was thinking. Genes can skip a generation, so why not bad art gifts too!

Rose says:

12:22pm | 18/01/13

Wow, you think you have bad parents because they have a life?? It’s not how often your parents see their grandkids, or whether or not they babysit or do the whole ‘turn up at everything your kids do’  that matters, it’s whether of not they are really ‘with’ the kids while they are there.
I’m not sure that putting their lives on hold in order to be at yours and your kids’ beck and call would make them good parents, I think it would eventually become a pain in the arse for everyone concerned. Just accept the type of people your parents are, and that they have every right to put their needs first now, and stop comparing them to the in-laws, people with different likes, desires and life choices.

Paul says:

12:47pm | 18/01/13

Damn Phil… Sounds like you are a miserable SOB.  I suspect the reason your folks don’t come around to see you and the children that much… is you.

Seriously, if you think it’s ok to hurt your mum by rejecting her gifts I’m not surprised she doesn’t make time for you!  Based on what you have written you sound like a spoilt ratbag… And I hope your children grow up to treat you in exactly the same way.  I suspect your wife is much nicer to her parents than you are to yours which is why they are around more.

Sam says:

01:34pm | 18/01/13

Your kids don’t sacrifice to give you the life you want, you sacrifice to give your kids the life they deserve. Phil is simply lamenting that they are not enjoying what many would consider the best years of being a grandparent.

I would put the pic with all the other framed things in the garage that are not on the walls as there is not enough space.

Idiot boomer in laws says:

01:59pm | 18/01/13

I am going to stick up for Phil here. Phil’s parents sound just like my in laws. They only have time for their only grandchild when it suits them. They expect us to drop everything when they decide to make their occasional visit. And yet when we visit them, we have to work around their social life. We both work full time and also work weekends, evenings and public holidays yet can always make time to visit them. These people have been retired as of the age of 40 while my MIL has never worked and yet they think their time is more important than anyone else’s. They sometimes offer to take our daughter to things like the Christmas parade, only to cancel at the last minute or turn up hours late. They’ve turned up hours late to every special event like birthdays and christenings and expect everyone else to sit and wait.
They get obviously tired of and exasperated with our daughter within an hour or two of visiting and just expect her to disappear and not make a peep. And yet tell their friends and other family members about how much time they put into being grandparents. The pair of them are an absolute joke.
And as far as crap gifts go, they never spend more than $20, never include a card and never wrap. Gifts are usually completely unsuitable, inappropriate for young children or are my husbands (broken and rusty) old toys they’ve found around the house, to save them forking out a penny.
My husband I I certainly don’t think they should put their lives on hold for their grandchild but spending 5 minutes of actually playing with her wouldn’t hurt, rather than shooing her away. And we’d prefer they bought nothing than the cheap or broken crap they dish out.

Jay2 says:

02:05pm | 18/01/13

I know of Grandparents like Phil’s, and based upon that, I don’t he isn’t being a miserable sob.

My BF’s Parents have made very little effort with their Grandkids in the last 18 years. 
The only time they saw the Grandkids was when my friend loaded the kids in the car and drove the forty minute trip. The visit would only last 30 minutes tops, because a four year old who never shut up irritated the crap out of Grandpa & ma apparently.
Even when the kids did sports ten minutes from the Grandparent’s doorstep, they apparently couldn’t make the trip,not once, because that was when Grandpa’s televised dart game was run.
Birthdays were a hit and miss for actually remembering. For the eldest’s 16th, she received $15.00 worth of scratch lottery tickets-too bad if she actually won ‘cause legally she couldn’t collect it.
Now the Grandparents are older, don’t travel and are more house confined, apparently all they ever do now is whinge to my BF how the now grown up Grandkids don’t visit or bother to call.
Nobody expects the sun to rise and set around the Grandkids, after all Grandparents have raised theirs but a little bit of effort and interest doesn’t go astray.

The worst Christmas present I received, hands down, was from a ‘friend’ who gave me a 3 tiered brass photo frame. The only problem was, that she forgot I was there when she opened it up on her 21st four months earlier. “Oh!! Wow, this is just like the one you got for your 21st…What did you put in yours?”. The look was priceless.

Philosopher says:

02:47pm | 18/01/13

you make them sound like the weird hanging stick figures those poor kids stumbled upon in the Blair Witch Project.

LJ Dots says:

02:32pm | 18/01/13

I like this.

In her later years my mum took up pottery. That asymmetrical, lop sided, weirdly bulging clay pot with bee sting stripes that I got for my birthday is still in our kitchen holding loose change, rubber bands and paper clips.

I use it every day and even now, it still gives me a smile.

Gordon says:

04:29pm | 18/01/13

Know the feeling LJ Dots. Mine took up politics, and each year at tax return time I come over all misty-eyed.

NSS says:

03:00pm | 18/01/13

More food to the buffet, Bitten. (haha, this is making me hungry!). What if Mum truly believed that her daughter would love it? What if she believed she was being very thoughtful and her ego played only a minor part, ie pride in her work?

There is reciprocal responsibility on both sides of gifts The giver should do their best to give an appropriately thoughtful gift, agreed. However, the receiver in turn should accept gifts with grace. I admire the Japanese on this one. They are masters of the art of not offending in this manner. That’s what gifts are all about. It’s not about ego, it’s about thinking of the other person.

Hmm. Perhaps both Mum and daughter here are guilty to some degree of the sin of “me, me, me”? Interesting.

Philosopher says:

03:22pm | 18/01/13

I was wrong about you, Bitten… you now remind me of Judy Garland in Wizard of Oz. Skip, skip, skirt twirling, singing songs, laughing and dancing.

Bitten says:

03:41pm | 18/01/13

Nom nom NSS.

Eh. If I give someone a gift and they make the funny present-I-hate face, I don’t think they’re selfish, I just think I cocked up and will have to do better next time or discreetly give them the receipt at some point. 

My pleasure in giving is the enjoyment the receiver gets out of what I gave them. So if they don’t like it, I want to know about it and I want to fix it or do it better next time.

Bitten says:

04:36pm | 18/01/13

“I was wrong about you, Bitten… you now remind me of Judy Garland in Wizard of Oz. Skip, skip, skirt twirling, singing songs, laughing and dancing.”

Hmmm…I’ll be honest dear, the attention is odd and I don’t think you’re as good at cross-thread virtual smackdowns as you think you are. It’s sort of a weirdly ironic mix of an attempt to infantilise me with the image of a cute little girl, by referencing an actress and a film I’ve never seen because, well, I wasn’t born in the 1950s. Or 1960s. Or 1970s…

Philosopher says:

05:17pm | 18/01/13

actually I was being ironic.
More like Sarah Connor?

Bitten says:

05:30pm | 18/01/13

Ironic? No. Sarcastic? Possibly.

And the reality is you don’t know anything about me. So you don’t get to project what you ‘imagine’ me to be like by putting words in my mouth effectively because I will always point out the things you say that cannot be credibly inferred from my posts, mmmmkay? Sorry to be an interwebs buzzkill Philospher. On the other hand bring back logic, rationality and effective argument/counter arguments in response to things actually written, not things you wish had been written so you could slam someone as a 2D stereotype, and I’ll be your dancing partner