Wall Street Journal — Blog — Focht Family Practice

With graduation season right around the corner, the issue of what or how much to give your graduate will be much discussed in the coming weeks. And it raises the larger question of equal spending on gifts when you have more than one child. The Wall Street Journal recently asked me my thoughts on this topic. I’ve shared and expanded on them below for those who are not subscribers.

Parents typically want to spend the same amount of money on each child in the spirit of fairness. But an event like graduation complicates the situation. Birthdays happen annually for each of the children, but a graduation is a one-off situation, causing parents to calculate amounts in their head and strain their memories to remember what was gifted older children for comparable graduations.

Spending equal amounts on children, generally, is a sound policy, though it is a complicated formula. When you have siblings in varying age categories, or when parents’ financial circumstance change over time, or parents split up and re-partner – those are circumstances that can affect an “equal spending” mantra. Additionally, there are many other places parents spend money on children throughout a year that might need to be part of the equation.

Instead of pure equality in dollar amounts, parents should strive for fairness over time rather equal spending at each gift giving opportunity. Fair does not necessarily mean equal. Fairness considers the larger context, specific circumstances, and each child as an individual.

Suppose your middle schooler wants a pair of super pricey sneakers for his or her birthday. While this means nothing to a 7-year-old sibling at this juncture, when that child reaches middle school but is told, for example, she cannot have the expensive hair straightener she is requesting that cost about the same. These feelings may be directed at you the parent, the sibling, or internalized to mean something about how you feel about her.

You’ll also see this in reverse as parents are able to spend more on younger siblings as the older ones move out or parents begin to do better financially. An older sibling may feel some kind of way when his younger brother is given a brand-new iPhone for his 14th birthday but at 14 all he got was “crummy refurbished laptop.” Again, these feelings may manifest as resentment and anger at the parents, the sibling or both. Or the child may internalize this to mean their parents have a favorite child.

With a goal of fairness over time it becomes easier to consider other costs such as extra curricular activities. If one child is involved in travel sports that eats greatly into a family’s budget, and another child is into electronics, it might be fair to spend more on the second child’s electronic gifts at Christmas or their birthday than the gifts purchased for their athletic child. These things can and typically do balance out over time.

It’s also important to consider your individual children. Some children care more about these things than others. It can be helpful to know your child’s love language to you can better assess what each most needs and deems important. A quality time or acts of service kid might not pay any attention to the gifts given to a sibling if they are personally getting the quality time or meeting their acts of service needs consistently. This is also a way to consciously attend to the ways equity and fairness are not always about equality. Parents can discover their child’s love language via this site.

There are different quizzes for different age groups.

I believe in being as age appropriately open, honest, and transparent as possible with your children when it comes to most issues, this includes money and finances. Open up around how you make decisions around buying gifts and spending money in general. Kids don’t need all the specifics, but you can let them in on your process. This is how they begin to learn about making financial decisions. These are great topics for family meetings and a positive way to break the taboos many families have around not talking about money.

When children are included in conversations and provided insight into how you make decisions, resentment is less likely and securing their buy in and cooperation becomes easier. When you don’t talk to children, they fill in the blanks themselves and make up their own stories about what things mean in relation to themselves. Children understand more than most parents give them credit for, and even if they don’t fully understand, they’re willing to go along If they are made to feel included and allowed to have a voice in the process.

Lastly, if there are wounds that around this topic impacting sibling and/or the parent-child relationship, a family therapist can help you navigate the healing process.