Our first invite to a birthday party - what's the deal with gifts?

ReeceFamily

DD just got her first invite to a bday party, for another little girl in her daycare that is turning 2.  What's the deal with gifts - how much is appropriate to spend, in general, etc.?  What have you guys done in these situations.  This is not a family I know well at all.

As a side note - the interesting thing about this family is that I used to "know" the mom through the Bump pregnancy loss forums.  We both now have daughters under 2 going to the same daycare/school.  Life is funny .

sarums4

Following! We just got invited to our first daycare birthday party too. I was thinking I'd just grab a $10-$15 set of bath toys or something...

jobiann

I was thinking around $20 with gift receipt. Maybe more if the parents are actually friends of ours too. I usually tend not to get caught up a dollar amount, I try and find something I know they will really like.

Jessie333

We spend between. $20-30.

OhBaby+2013

DS went to his first party in August. I spent $25 on a wooden train.

==N==

I guess I'm cheap. I spend about $10 at this age because they don't care. For ds's friends, he's 8, I spend 20-25.

ConstanceGoodspeed

We spend $15-20.

this decaf life

Crazy coincidence! We're trying not to get wrapped up in the gift giving awkwardness. 

We've given 2 gifts only to kids we know really well and even then it was only like $15. Most of the people I know are big on not giving gifts.

I'm thinking about DD's birthday I almost don't want people to know it's a birthday party so that we don't get a bunch of gifts. 

Hollylb3

I do $15-20 max.

OhBaby+2013

@this decaf life‌ I'm thinking the same thing for DS's 2nd birthday. I'm thinking of just having a "play date" and then having some cake with them all here. We didn't have a party at all for his first and I'm not really into a big party for his 2nd either.

ReeceFamily

Ha, so I still have no clue what to do!!! I think ill do $20 ish. And, yeah, I'm definitely planning on staying low key for DDs birthdays. She is the only grandchild of divorced parents on both sides so she is plenty spoiled with 4 sets of grandparents!! A few of my friends have done the play date no gifts thing, it works out great.

BabyHope2013

I usually spend around $20. We just went to a birthday party over the weekend for the little boy who lives down the street for us that DS plays with. I knew they had alot of toys already, so I actually got a plastic tote from target and filled it with art supplies (alot of the stuff was already on sale for back to school) construction paper, water color paint, finger paint, pipe cleaners, scissors (he will need to grow into those), glue sticks, stickers, crayons, markers, coloring book and play doh. The mom absolutely loved it. It's stuff they can do together, especially with winter coming and needing to find more indoor activities soon.