Birthday Spending. What’s Normal?

ShannanB — Thu, 29 May 2008 01:23:00 +0000

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?

Mommy Bits » Appropriate birthday spending

Birthday Spending. What’s Normal?