holiday gifts for 7 related services providers?

[Anonymous]

What do you do for all the therapists who help you're child a few times per week per IEP?

I do a cash collection with his class for the classroom teacher and aides.
The PTO does a big lunch for all the staff and teachers (so that gets the librarian, specials teachers etc.)

But usually I get a little gift bag with something consumable and inexpensive for the 7 providers who work with my DC one on one. One year I got fancy chocolate and flower seed packets in a little bag and said "Thank you for being so sweet and helping me grow" - little cheesy tokens that were very inexpensive but included a note of thanks that DC drew etc.

Curious what others do? I can't afford $10-20 per teacher - it gets ridiculous.

I end up covering for other parents just to do the classroom class collection. (That's another issue: this is what happens when parents don't send in their share after agreeing to a class collection!!)

Any ideas?

I was thinking gourmet pots of jam this time for a holiday breakfast, but how many "thanks for being so sweet" messages can we send lol.

[Anonymous]

Our family does gift cards but I think your personal touch is really nice and better! Especially love the seed idea. It's symbolic and if I were one of the specialists it would make me feel appreciated. I think most of the get into the field wanting to do good. Some become jaded and lazy or uncaring. Gifts like that may remind them of why they wanted to work with SN kids in the first place.

[Anonymous]

Thanks - I'm a professor and I'm totally into tokens of gratitude. It's against university rules to accept gifts from students (though they still do it often because they do not know and just leave them for me), but their little notes etc. are really special. So I try to do that for my DC's teachers too.

[Anonymous]

A token gift is fine. Back when 2 of my kids had IEPs and we had dozens of people working with them, I would have gone broke giving gift cards to everyone. I bought Lindt truffles (individually wrapped) in huge bags from Costco and just divided them into mini gift bags and added a heartfelt thank you from me and a card the kids had made. We also included the specials teachers. I think the craziest year was when my littlest was in both a private preschool with 3 teachers and 2 additional aftercare providers and LEAP at MD. There were maybe 5-6 student therapists at LEAP. He also had itinerant speech through MCPS. It was just so many people! My older son at the time had 2 classroom teachers, a special educator, SLP and OT at school. The exception was I gave a gift card to both our private SLP and OT because they were both seeing both kids.

[Anonymous]

I do $10-20 gift cards and for some, just a few dollar bag of candy (not ideal but after a point it adds up. I will not collect as a room parent as I always end up paying for most of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A token gift is fine. Back when 2 of my kids had IEPs and we had dozens of people working with them, I would have gone broke giving gift cards to everyone. I bought Lindt truffles (individually wrapped) in huge bags from Costco and just divided them into mini gift bags and added a heartfelt thank you from me and a card the kids had made. We also included the specials teachers. I think the craziest year was when my littlest was in both a private preschool with 3 teachers and 2 additional aftercare providers and LEAP at MD. There were maybe 5-6 student therapists at LEAP. He also had itinerant speech through MCPS. It was just so many people! My older son at the time had 2 classroom teachers, a special educator, SLP and OT at school. The exception was I gave a gift card to both our private SLP and OT because they were both seeing both kids.

In LEAP sometimes i just did our specific therapist and the director and got candy or something small for the others and other times I got $10 gift cards for the staff and $20 for the director and our assigned one. I did it every semester. A few times I went to Costco and got a bundle gift card set and broke it out. Some families did each, some did just their provider, some did none. Choice is yours.

[Anonymous]

Doesn’t MCPS have a $20/year limit?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Doesn’t MCPS have a $20/year limit?

$20 per gift. There is a separate per year limit. I can’t remember what it is but it’s quite a bit higher.

[Anonymous]

Token Gifts are cute esp since its hard for us to get DC to do notes or draw, however, I've found that after the bag, card and token gift you are basically at a $5 gift card.

[Anonymous]

I give $5 gift card plus a thank you card to one teacher that just starts last week with my DD for 30 min/week, is it considered too cheap?