As far as gift giving goes, one thing that we do is give the kids a homemade coupon book as a gift – I mentioned this last year.  This is really popular with our kids.  This year when I created them I looked at my files of what we gave last year to see what was most used.  That helped me to create coupons I was sure would all be well received.  Basically, I use coupons as the gift of our time/personal attention, or for things they like to do but we don’t usually agree to.  I also offered 2 chore replacements for the older kids (out of a booklet of 10).

One of the coupons we gave our three younger kids (8.5,7,5) is for a sleepover on the pullout couch in the living room with a sibling.  These three children regularly request this, and usually get told ‘no’.  So last night the 5 yo used his coupon for a sleepover and invited his 8.5 year old brother to be his sibling of choice.  (That was after asking his 11 yo sister, who really didn’t want to accept the honor. :))

The two oldest girls also used a coupon right away, a couple of nights ago.  We have family video night once a month, along with educational videos that relate to what we’re studying.  So one coupon was for each child to watch a video of their choice, by him or herself, with me or dh.  (DVD player is in our room.)  Because they have similar interests in movies, I allowed them to each use ‘half’ a video credit and watch the movie they chose together, and then they can use the other half to watch another movie together.  They chose Ice Princess, which they loved – it’s a G rated Disney movie, but not something I would choose for a family video.  I recently showed them some clips of ice skating footage from past competitions and they enjoyed it very much, and this was an ice skating movie – so, perfect. 

I really like that they are cashing in their coupons so quickly this year – last year everyone was hoarding them and there was a rush about a month ago when everyone realized the year was almost over and they better use them before they expired.  When I owe money, I like to pay it off immediately, and so this is kind of similar -I owe my kids these things, and I’m happy to ‘pay it off’ as soon as I can. 🙂

This may sound like a simple or boring gift, but don’t underestimate it – the kids all look forward to this and excitedly go through their coupon books when they get them.  Next year I’m thinking that I will change the way I present the coupons, maybe in a certificate form instead of as a booklet.  But I have plenty of time to think about that!

Avivah