Verified by 
There are lots of ways that harried and frenzied parents handle child gift-giving during the holidays. In desperate times, I have bought something for my children to give away, wrapped it, slapped a bow on it, and shoved into their hands as I pushed them towards their cousins.
In years of more leisure, I have taken my children to Santa’s workshop— a magical place in the back of the local thrift store where the elves secretly help them pick out wrap and label gifts for Mom and Dad. But last Christmas morning, when I opened my new mug that said “Grandma,” and watched my husband open his cedar chip pendant, I thought perhaps there was a better way.
This year, I’ve tried to give it some thought, so that the gift-giving onslaught wouldn’t catch me unawares. And yet, here I am, a week before Christmas, finally sitting down to have in depth conversations with each of my children.
I asked my five-year-old son: “What do you think your sister would like for Christmas?”
“I don't know, a lightsaber?”
He was writhing around face down on the window seat. Let’s try again.
“That’s what you might want. What do you think your sister might want? “
“I don't know. She’s a girl.”
“Well, how can we figure out what she might want?”
He looked at me quizzically and said, “I don’t know. Maybe you could pick up her brain and put it in my head?
Yes! Exactly. Giving the perfect gift is about getting inside someone’s head. And for kids, the exercise of how they pick the gift is probably the most important part of the holiday season.
So let’s figure out a different brain: “What’s the first thing your sister does when she got up this morning? When was the last thing that your sister cried about? If your sister had to go on a long car trip, what’s the one thing she’d take with her? If she had to buy a birthday gift for her very best friend, what would she pick out? What aisle in the toy store does she go to first?
Ask the questions, and then give your child some time to think about it, to watch that person, if possible. And then talk about it again the next day.
Thinking of these questions reminds me of when I first started neuroscience graduate school—I was developing a social appropriateness test for individuals on the autism spectrum. Those patients would have had a difficult time answering any of these gift-giving questions. Why? Autistic individuals lack something called theory of mind, or the ability to see things from another person’s perspective. Individuals with autism have empathy impairments.
But the struggle to feel empathy is rampant in our culture. Studies have shown that self-reported empathy has been declining for the last 30 years across society. Why? Perhaps it’s social isolation propagated by our vast number of virtual Facebook friendships and our shrinking number of deep friendships. Perhaps it‘s the increase in violent media that numbs the empathetic response. Or maybe our children just don't practice it.
Though this empathy plummet is cause for concern, the fact that it can change (and change quickly) means that empathy is more fluid than perhaps previously thought. It’s impossible for dramatic DNA changes in empathy-related genes to occur within just one generation, so these changes must be environmental. If life choices are able to drive it down, then perhaps making different choices can bump it back up again.
We can bump it up by practice, starting this December. We can turn gift giving from a burden into a puzzle. And if you’re short on time, once you’ve solved the puzzle, there’s always Amazon.
Gift giving is really about trying to meet someone else’s needs. Teaching your child how to pick out a good gift is really teaching them how to understand how someone else thinks and feels.
You’re giving your child the gift of practicing an essential life skill. Sure, it’s the thought that counts.
But it’s the deliberate effort to think like someone else that counts even more.
