Alabama Babies
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Has it become standard?
For the presents NOT to be opened at 1st birthday parties?
I went to one two weeks ago and they didn't open the presents, plus I have noticed a lot of the girls on 9-12 who say they aren't going to open presents at their LO's b'day party.
I get that babies aren't really that interested in the present opening, but if you had an older child there (who usually love opening gifts) that could "help" then it seems like it would go fairly quickly and guests get to see the gifts being opened.
Maybe I'm in the minority but present opening at parties is one of my favorite things. I was just wondering if this is becoming standard?
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Re: Has it become standard?
As a guest, I want to see my gift opened. I always put a lot of time into my gifts, and I want to see that appreciated.
If I could re-do anything from Caleb's 1st b-day party, I would not have opened gifts. The LO's were not at all interested in it and Caleb didn't want to sit there and do it either. I actually felt kinda awkward opening all of his gifts b/c there were times when he ran off and wasn't even with me. We were at The Little Gym and I wish I had just taken that time to let them play in the gym longer.
For his 2nd b-day, he definitley wanted to open gifts, which we did, and he loved it...but, the problem then was that it was very overwhelming to him that I kept taking things away from him to open another one. He wanted to completely open each thing (like out of the boxes and and stuff) and there was no way we had time to do that. Everytime I took something away from him to hand him another gift to open, he seemed a little irritated like, "What are you doing mom?!" So, I kinda wish we hadn't opened gifts at his 2nd b-day party either.
Ditto this.
Presents will be opened at William's 1st birthday. That way we can all say thank you and William can learn how to appreciate gift giving and recieving.
This is really hard... While I understand people want to see their gift being opened and your reaction, for us it was completely overwhelming. We had a fairly large 1st birthday for Avery (over 50 guests) and it was just soooo much to go thru.
I don't know what the 'right' answer is but I wish I would have just held off on gift opening and did it with Avery over a few days
we did NOT open gifts at the party. let's be honest - a one year old has no idea what's going on and cannot yet understand the concept of giving and receiving in this way. also, I believe a TON of gifts at once is overwhelming for a baby. we opened the gifts over the next couple of weeks.
I think Brooke's idea is good - if certain people really want to see their present opened, you could do it at the very end.
We opened the presents at both of J's parties...to be honest, the kids were pretty excited to see him opening them. We did presents while everyone was eating cake, so most were sitting down anyway.
I had intended on opening presents, but Mitchell was so blessed and there was so many! It was way to hot in the house and so many people I think it just would've been a little chaotic.
I ended up opening gifts or the guests who asked me to before they left and that seemed to work out well for us.