Birthday Spending. What’s Normal?

So this Saturday SM has been invited to attend a birthday party for one of his friends from school (he’s in Kindergarten). This is the first time that he’s been invited to a party where the parent of the child does not also happen to be one of my gal pals.

While I am excited about him going to the party, I am not sure about the gift etiquette. What is the appropriate spending amount for a 6 year old child who you don’t really know?
As I mentioned before, we’ve always gone to the parties of children we are friends with. For them, going a little overboard on the gift is the norm because their like family. Usually it’s children I’ve known since they were born.
I went ahead and took the boys shopping this evening to pick up the gift and ended up spending about $25, not including the gift bag, tissue paper, b-day card, etc.
SM really likes the gifts we picked out (and I do too) and I feel like the amount I spent is appropriate, but I just want to make sure the spending level/gift is on par with the norm.
Any advice/insight you guys have would be greatly appreciated. It’s really not about the money, I’d just love to know what you think is appropriate. Should I spend more? Less?

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