This Single Mom Pays A Sitter To Take Her Kids Christmas Shopping For Her Presents
She has never had presents under the tree — until now.
As a divorced mom, one of the hardest parts of the holidays is facing Christmas morning knowing that I will not have presents under the tree unless I buy them and wrap them for myself. And as my kids get older, they’ve started to notice that I’m not unwrapping much on Christmas morning. But while they’re old enough to want to shop for me, they’re not old enough to go out and do it by themselves.
But one savvy parent on Reddit seems to have found a solution to this problem faced by many single moms, and it’s pretty simple!
On the Parenting forum, poster “Betty” explains that she has two boys — a nine year old and a four year old — and their dads aren’t in the picture. At the same time, her family is thousands of miles away. This means that every Christmas, she doesn’t have anything under the tree.
But now she’s found a solution.
“This year I decided no more! I’m having my sitter pick them up from school this weekend and taking them Christmas shopping for me,” she wrote. “They can pick whatever they want and she has some ideas for guidance if they need it they are gonna wrap them and mom will finally have presents under the tree AND THINGS IN HER STOCKING.”
She went on to explain that all of this hubbub isn’t just so that she can have gifts for herself. It’s also about teaching her boys about gift giving.
“This is about me wanting my children to grow up knowing the importance of gift exchanging, of the importance of giving, and how often times it feels even better than receiving gifts & acts of service,” she explained. “I think it’s important for them to see themselves give joy to others... I refuse to let my boys be someone’s ain’t shit man that disappoints on holidays, doesn’t wash his 🍑 and can’t do the laundry.”
Although she adds, “Also selfishly, I really wanna unwrap something that I didn’t buy and wrap myself.” And who can blame her!?
Down in the comments, other parents applauded her plan.
“This is brilliant! What a good idea! I bet everyone will have fun shopping together and then feel really good about it again on Christmas morning,” one wrote.
“Good for you!! When my kid is older I am going to follow your example,” another wrote.
And other moms chimed in with their solutions to the problem.
Several moms with slightly older kids let their children shop slightly unsupervised.
“Fellow single parent here. I have done this for years, my kids love it! With my two older kids, I would set them loose in Target with however much money and they would pick everything out and pay for it and then we would all meet up at the front when everyone was done. Worked out great. They had money and got to choose things for each other and myself and got to experience the joy of gift-giving and hey I got a little gift under the tree too which was fun on Christmas morning❤️,” one mom wrote.
Others have a relative or friend help out with the present-buying, with one single mom swapping duties with another single mom.
“I have another single mum friend and we’ve done this for each other with respective kids for a few years for this reason (children are older),” she explained.
One person gave a different but really meaningful perspective.
“As the son of a single parent, I wish I had been able to do this for mom. I think it would have been so fulfilling,” he wrote.
