How to Buy Gifts for Adolescents

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[This instructional manual is presented to you in HD and without interruption, thanks to the generous sponsorship of Too Chickenshit To Tell My Actual Relatives.]


1. Make an honest commitment to buy something they want, and not something you want them to have. If you're buying him books because he asked for books, great! If you're buying him books because you think he really ought to read more, and the reviews promised this title was a fun-loving romp sure to be enjoyed by all children ages 8-14, then you've failed.

If you simply cannot bring yourself to commit to step one, that's fine--it's your money, and we do teach our children to be polite about all gifts regardless of how much they actually like them. But quit getting all butt-hurt every year when, surprise surprise, they put your gift on a shelf and never touch it.


2. Think long and hard about the actual age of the adolescents you are shopping for. Do your best to remember where you were, what you were doing, and the things that were popular when you were that age. An 11-year-old is in middle school, and is most likely not into Legos and K'Nex anymore. A 15-year-old is learning to drive, and has moved beyond jewelry that is made from brightly-colored plastic.


3. Accept the fact that the majority of children are indifferent to craft projects. There are a few who are into them, and they are usually really into them--but most kids don't have the patience or desire to sit there and bead their own bracelets or whatever for 3 hours. 4-year-olds think the stuff they did themselves is the best ever. Older kids are smart enough to recognize that different people have different talents, and they know that they're not going to be able to make something half as good as they could have just bought in a store. This principle applies to jewelry kits, make-your-own bath products kits, build-a-racecar kits, decorate your own t-shirt kits, wacky science kits, crystal-growing kits, paint your own birdhouse kits... nothing with the word "kit" or "activity" in it. Ever.


4. So how do you find something they actually want? Very easy. Go to Amazon, Etsy, or in a pinch, Ebay. Choose a name of a specific thing they already like. Most likely this is a TV show, a sports team, a musical instrument, a videogame, a book series, or an anime character.

Now search for that term, plus one of these words: shirt, toy, game, accessory, plush, gift, novelty. (Unless you're on Etsy, in which case just search for the item of interest, because everything on that site will already be gifty.) You may have to try several combinations to hit the appropriate jackpot, but in the first few pages of results, you will find something they will like, and don't already have.


5. Ignore the temptation to say to yourself, "That's kind of useless," or "But he won't learn anything from it." Revisit step one again and again. Nobody likes gifts that are meant as passive-aggressive ways to improve themselves, and kids are not stupid.

Don't buy them clothes. Ignore the retailer's suggested age-range. Don't buy them the thing that Amazon says is a top-seller: that just means all their friends are going to get that same disappointing too-young-for-them toy from all their grandmas. Adolescents don't want generic toys. They are desperately trying to establish their own uniqueness, and they want you to notice and recognize whatever their defining thing is, even if the reality is a million other adolescents also like the same thing.


[This concludes our program. Remember, figgy pudding is available in the lobby for a small fee.]