Gift Giving Guy

Yesterday we celebrated my nephew’s fourth birthday. The party theme was dinosaurs: a homemade brontosaurus cake with brownies for feet, a T-Rex tee-shirt, triceratops thumb puppets, even dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets. My nephew unwrapped his first gift, an oblong present.

It was a toy rifle.

My first thought: No one cleared that with my brother or sister-in-law. No one checked to see if the Outdoor Hunter Bolt Action Classic Rifle with gun shot sound effects and ejecting plastic shell casings is okay with Mom and Dad. I called out my nephew’s name to get his attention. “You can only use that for dinosaur hunting,” I said.

After the gift opening, I asked my brother, and he said the gift came from a neighbor’s kid, and his dad was a gun enthusiast. And no one asked him or his wife before giving the gift. According to 2003 research in the journal Pediatrics, 67 percent of parents surveyed believed it was never okay for a child to play with toy guns.

Most of the time, you contact the parents, like I did, to make sure you don’t repeat a gift. We gave my nephew the Hide & Seek Safari T-Rex, with two extra wands, and I really wanted to make sure he didn’t have it already. (See my earlier post on Hide & Seek Toys.)

But if you are going to give something to child that parents might object to, whether it’s a puppy or a plastic rifle, always check first.